


if not for you

by goingmywaydoll



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, Slow Build, Summer Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21836437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingmywaydoll/pseuds/goingmywaydoll
Summary: On a Wednesday he breaks up with Rachel. The next Tuesday, he leaves on a road trip with David.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 166
Kudos: 573
Collections: Schitt's Creek Open Fic Night 2.0





	1. road to nowhere (the talking heads)

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came sort of out of nowhere when I was brainstorming with someone and looking for writing prompts for her--I suggested a prompt about one person breaking up with their partner and needing to find one other person to go on this planned road trip with them. And I promptly snatched it back and said jk I want this idea, wrote 20k in a week and collapsed. So this is that (with some editing, of course).
> 
> All of the tourist attractions mentioned in here are 100% real tourist attractions in rural Ontario. There isn't a real route that they took and the ones in here don't really make sense for a real road trip given the space between them, but I used them anyway, because they're random and hilarious.
> 
> And please please please look at the lovely art made for this piece by Clara, who is absurdly talented and very very cool and who I am obsessed with for [this artwork](https://hatepotion.tumblr.com/post/189797626029/its-ofn-im-very-excited-because-i-got-to-draw).
> 
> Here are some quotes I had running through my head while writing this:
> 
>  _When I was falling in love with my best friend and instead of being able to do anything about it, I watched him fall in love with someone else. Because I didn’t have the courage to act publicly on those feelings._  
>  Dan Levy, _GLAAD acceptance speech_
> 
>  _There are many things I am not allowed to tell you._  
>  Richard Siken, _Dirty Valentine_
> 
>  _We learn that a monarch’s wings are orange with black veins, not orange with black stripes. I look at my veins, blue beneath my skin, and wish I could fly._  
>  Jacob Guajardo, _What Got Into Us_
> 
>  _Through much of college I avoided romance because I wanted more: more knowledge, more goals, always striving. Then I fell for a close friend. The first morning I woke up to him — gentle arms, even breathing in the gray dawn — was the first time I wanted less. Less work. Less time committed to calendars. Nothing more than this small, simple present lasting._  
>  Liana Wang, For Once, I Wanted Less

Patrick is seventeen when he breaks up with Rachel for the last time, sitting in his car outside her house two days after graduation. She’s biting her nails, a habit she kicked when they were fourteen, and it’s all he can focus on, the guilt sitting low in his stomach. She asks him if he’s sure.

“Yeah,” he tells her, looking down at his lap. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

He can see her inhale, shoulders rising with the depth of it, out of the corner of his eye. “Okay,” she says in a small voice. “Okay.”

“Rach—” He can’t even finish her name, much less finish a sentence that’s supposed to be an apology, or an attempt at one. 

He can feel her looking at him, waiting. Eventually, he waits too long, the silence becoming unbearable, and she unbuckles her seatbelt. “I’ll see you around, Patrick,” she says, quickly as she ducks her head and opens the door.

She’s crying, he can tell, her red hair forming a sheet over her face. She’s out the door before he can stop her, though he doesn’t really want to; he meant it when he said he thinks it’s for good this time, that it’d be best for them both to go into college and the future unattached. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, leaning down so he can see her through the open window. 

She pauses on her front walk, head down. “Sure you are,” she says; it’s not bitter at all, just more resigned than it should be after ending a high school relationship. 

He drives away before she disappears behind her front door, skipping the turn to his house and taking random turns around town. He changes the radio station three times before pulling over and taking out his phone and the aux cable, plugging it in. He plays whatever he was listening to last— _Road to Nowhere_ comes on, right off of the playlist he made for their road trip, the one they were supposed to leave for next week.

He lets the playlist go for a while as he drives, figuring it should be listened to at some point. He spent hours making it with David and Stevie, lying on the grass in Patrick’s backyard until his mom, dressed in her pajamas and a robe, told them it was getting a little late, even for summer, and they should get home to their parents. David handed him his phone back, telling him that once it had at least fifty percent more Whitney Houston, it would be ready. 

Patrick grinned and shoved his shoulder. “I think I’ll just add more Bruce Springsteen,” he said. David pulled a face and left without a goodbye, just a faked glare over his shoulder. 

It’s a Friday, early afternoon in the summer, which means his parents will be home from work early and the thought of either lying to them about how Rachel is or telling them how Rachel really is makes him want to keep driving for hours. So he does, listening to the playlist meant for the highway and made with his two best friends, and trying not to think about how relieved he feels. 

It’s all he can feel, with the windows rolled down and the volume turned up, just unabashed relief at what’s before him. Rachel never forced him to do anything, never pressured him to make certain choices; but there’s something about not being with her that makes him feel free. He thinks he wants to chase this feeling, so he keeps driving without a destination, until he worries about gas and getting home in time for dinner, until the guilt rolls in, slow and turning in his stomach as he thinks about how good he feels. He pushes it down, but it doesn’t work and his knuckles go white on the wheel. 

He’s found himself on David’s street, so he pulls over and texts him. He needs to tell someone. He shouldn’t be excited to tell someone that he’s broken up with Rachel, but he is, and David is nearby, so he pulls up in front of his house and waits, mostly for the turning in his stomach to subside.

Instead of responding, David comes out his front door and walks briskly over to Patrick’s car, getting in before Patrick can even unbuckle. “Hey, what’s—”

“Can you just drive?” David asks, cutting him off. 

Patrick blinks twice before restarting the car and driving away from his house. He’s already wasted enough gas driving nowhere, so he pulls into the parking lot by the Dairy Queen near school and turns to David. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks. 

David doesn’t look at him, just down at his hands in his lap. “No,” David says. Patrick waits, because he can tell David does want to talk about it. “Okay, fine, it’s just that Alexis has been grounded for taking a modeling gig in South Korea that Mom and Dad didn’t approve so they’re pissed at her agent _and_ her, so they said that’s it, no modeling for the rest of the summer and she has to stay home and retake geometry because apparently she also skipped too many classes to pass because she went off on a shoot somewhere in Europe. So now she’s going to be home, like, _all_ summer, which sucks? Because it’s my last summer at home and whatever, I’m happy to see her and that she’s not jetting off getting a tattoo somewhere, but I also didn’t want her to be _in the house_ _all of the time_ , I just wanted her in this _country_ for five fucking minutes. And now Dad’s mad at _me_ for not being happy she’s home, which I never said I wasn’t! So I had to escape. Thanks for picking me up. What were you doing there?”

Patrick tries not to smile, really he does, because David is his friend and going through family things and he shouldn’t make light of that—he knows how tough the Roses can be, knows how much David just absorbs all their energy without finding a way to spit it back out in a way that’s healthy for him. “Just thought I’d see if you were home,” he replies. “Ice cream?”

He hadn’t intentionally driven them to Dairy Queen, just wanted a parking lot to be stationary in for a few minutes, but they’re here and David clearly needs ice cream.

“Please,” David says, and gets out of the car. “I don’t have my wallet, though.”

“I’ll spot you,” Patrick tells him, because that’s what they do. 

They sit at one of the plastic tables outside the counter and Patrick listens as David takes him through a blow-by-blow of the argument, content to live in the Roses’ world for a little bit and just listen. David drips ice cream all over the table while he’s brandishing his spoon and Patrick just sits there with his chin in his hands, biting back a smile and swallowing his laughs when appropriate. 

It doesn’t take long for David to slow down, looking at Patrick properly. “You’re quiet,” he says, eyes narrowed. Patrick raises an eyebrow and takes a bite of his Blizzard. “Usually you’d have no less than five witty comments in response to a story about my family.”

Patrick tilts his head to the side. “You count my witty comments?” 

“Mmm, so funny.” David nods, looking like he’s trying to look like he doesn’t find Patrick funny. He glances down at his ice cream, the twisty sort-of grin on his face fading. “Really, you seem sort of quiet. Everything okay?”

“Rachel and I broke up,” he says before he can even think about it. David’s head snaps up, eyes wide. There’s definitely surprise on his face, but something else flickering there too; Patrick can’t seem to parse it out. “For good this time,” he adds, just to see how David will respond.

“Oh,” is all he says. “I’m sorry.” He reaches across the table to put his hand on Patrick’s arm and Patrick finds himself leaning into it. David isn’t touchy or really comforting at all; but suddenly, he feels that way right now. It makes Patrick want more and the thought hits him hard, somehow knocking him out, though he should be used to it by now. It’s inconvenient, this way that David does the smallest, most mundane thing a friend could and it leaves Patrick reeling and wanting more. He pushes it down, like always.

“It’s fine.” He shakes his head, frowning at his melting ice cream. “I’m not really…” He’s not sure if he should say it, feeling sick to his stomach at the thought. “That upset about it. I feel like I should be. But I’m not.”

“That’s okay,” David says quickly. “You can feel… Whatever you want to feel.”

Patrick lets his eyes drift upward to David’s face, finding it uncharacteristically warm and open. It’s that, more than anything, that makes his stomach settle and the guilt drift away. 

He’s known David his whole life, or most of it at least, and he can read him like the back of his hand, better than he ever could Rachel, but he’s always had something closed-off about him, like there’s just one small thing simmering below the surface that he won’t let Patrick know. Maybe once, before Stevie, Patrick might have poked at it, might have let himself hope, tended to whatever heat pools in his stomach every time David touches him.

But David is David, still the boy who threw a tantrum at his sixth birthday party because he missed the cake, the boy who showed up at Patrick’s door at ten and told him he was running away and needed Patrick’s practicality if he was going to make it. He holes himself up in the ceramics studio for hours after school sometimes, just until Patrick is done with baseball practice or rehearsal for the play. He helped paint sets for Cabaret when Twyla broke her arm and couldn’t, even though it meant he had to be near Jake backstage. He kicked Alexis from the tiny movie theater in the Roses’ basement to watch _Bend It Like Beckham._ It’s what they do. It’s easier that way, Patrick figures; platonic is easier. It’s better than nothing. David isn’t friends with any of his exes, none except for Stevie, except they lasted less than a week and Patrick wants more than a week and eventually things would end and so would their friendship. So it’s easier.

“Thank you,” he says finally. He thinks he needed to hear that. David just shrugs, like he isn’t sure why he’s being thanked but will accept it anyway. 

David sucks a breath in and waves a hand. “I know a lot about break-ups. So like. Whatever you need. I’m here.”

Patrick thinks about falling asleep on David’s shoulder on the bus home from a field trip to the courthouse for their government class and he thinks about the first time they ever got high together and how David leaned against Stevie then and they disappeared, then how they didn’t speak to each other for a week after that, Patrick desperately moving between the two of them, both of them closed-lipped, the heat in Patrick’s stomach thick and uncomfortable. _Whatever you need_. Patrick shakes the thought from his head. He’s not going through that again, on the other side of it this time.

He thinks about telling David everything on his mind, how he feels open, free, happy, relieved—like he should be devastated. He told Rachel he loved her, had sex with her for the first time two months ago, planned on driving across the country with her, and clung to those things, like if he could just make it to the road trip, if he could just make it through that then they’d last and be strong enough to last through college. Right now, he’s struggling to remember why he ever wanted them to last through college. It could have been the comfort and safety, the desire for something stable with everything else up in the air, except that David knew him just as well as Rachel did, has known him even longer, and even with all his chaos, David brought as much stability to his life as Rachel did.

Patrick wonders if he even brings more than Rachel, who broke up with him sophomore year, then again junior year; he used to think Rachel always coming back, always going back to her, was a mark of stability too. Something tangible he could count on, knowing the way her hand felt in his, how to make her laugh, what to get her for her birthday. He always felt unmoored, a little bereft, after their break-ups, but he doesn’t now. The finality of it is palpable. It feels good. He feels good.

He drives David back home and doesn’t tell him more about the break-up. He feels like if he talks more about how good he feels, and how awful that in return feels, he might let something out that he can’t take back. So he drops David off and tells him to call him if he needs an excuse to escape his family. 

David is halfway up the path when he stops and turns, just before Patrick is about to pull away. “What about the road trip?” he calls out, looking shocked at remembering it and, Patrick thinks, concerned too.

Patrick lets out a chuckle, shaking his head and looking away. “I guess it’s off, David. Unless you think I should go on a two-week road trip with my ex-girlfriend.”

“That sounds like something I would do. And not in a good way.” David is walking back toward the car, leaning on the passenger window to look Patrick in the eye. “So you’re just… Not going?”

“Nope,” Patrick says. “It’s not the end of the world, David, really—”

“But you were _looking forward_ to it.” David sounds appalled.

He’s right. Patrick _was_ looking forward to it, but he was looking forward to the wrong parts, he thinks; driving long stretches of highway, Rachel asleep in the passenger seat, music playing low. Rachel didn’t appear much in his imaginings of the trip they planned together. “There will be other road trips, you know.”

“ _Yeah,_ but you planned this one out. You can’t waste that playlist we made!”

“Right, because I can’t listen to it in any other context at all.”

David plays with the sleeve of his sweater. “It was just nice to see you like, _that_ excited about something,” he says quietly, clearly aiming for levity and missing by a mile.

Patrick can’t hide the surprise that flickers across his face. “Well, I can’t go alone, so…” He’s not sure what else to say, wanting to tell David that it’s okay, really, he’ll be fine without this road trip.

“I’ll go with you.”

His gaze snaps to meet David’s, looking for any sign that he’s joking. “Sorry, say that again?”

“I’d go with you,” David says again, this time quieter. He won’t look at Patrick.

“ _You’d_ go on a road trip?” Patrick asks, not even trying to hold back the incredulity. 

He bristles. “I mean, unless you don’t _want_ me to come.”

“You’d be miserable.” He can’t help the laugh that escapes him, especially when David’s grimace only gets more pronounced. “Can you honestly tell me you want to go on a two-week road trip in my uncle’s van?”

David hesitates, but only for a second. “Yes,” he says, a little like he’s pushing the word out like a boulder up a hill. Patrick raises his eyebrows. “I _want_ to come.”

“Okay, David,” Patrick says with a laugh, moving to put the car in drive. 

“Okay, so like, yeah, I would be miserable. But not that miserable? And you want to go on this road trip and no one else will come with you, so I have to.” David straightens and crosses his arms, looking at Patrick like he’s daring him to say no.

“That’s very nice of you, but it’s fine. I’ll be fine if I don’t get to go on this one road trip,” Patrick says, expecting David to nod and go into his house and never speak about it again. They’ll go to the beach next weekend like they always do, sit by the Roses’ pool, and he’ll go to Jays games and open mics like he does every summer before he starts his job.

“Mmm, but I won’t be. So I’m coming with you,” David says, determined. 

For a second, Patrick lets himself imagine it, the reality of going on a road trip with David, no one else in the car but the two of them. He thinks they’d argue over control of the aux cable and snacks at gas stations and if they should stay in a hotel or on the mattress Patrick has already put in the back of the van. He was going to share it with Rachel. He could put up string lights maybe, add a few pillows to make David more comfortable. He’s shared a bed with David before, but not since they were young and at sleepovers, on camping mattresses on the floor with flashlights and whispers so his mom or dad wouldn’t come in to tell them to go to bed. 

He could share a bed again with David, if David didn’t mind. He wants all of it—not just the shared bed but the late nights driving and gas station snacks—badly enough that he’s ready to believe David when he says he wants to come. He wants it too badly, he knows he wants it too badly, so badly he wonders if he should say no. He’ll end up saying things he doesn’t let himself think and he’ll say them to David, of all people. The healthy thing to do, the right thing to do, for their friendship, is to say no.

He doesn’t say no.

“If you still want to come in the morning, we’ll go,” is what he says, ignoring the way David’s face lights up in victory. “Keep in mind you’ll ruin this road trip if you’re miserable on it with me.”

“No misery,” David says with a grin. “Promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Patrick says, finally taking the car out of park. 

He still sees David on the curb outside his house when he looks through the rearview mirror and he stays there until Patrick turns the corner, or maybe longer.

… 

Sometime around noon, David texts him that he wants to go on the road trip. Patrick responds: _okay but it’s afternoon now, so it’s a little late._ David tells him to fuck off and also that he’s coming. 

… 

A few days before they leave, Stevie texts Patrick _sos @ the roses_ with nothing else, so he takes his time leaving the house to make her sweat, knowing it’s not an emergency, or she’d write more. Regardless, when he arrives, she glares at him.

“Punctual,” she says to him, arms crossed when he walks into David’s room.

“Neat,” he replies, looking around the unusually wrecked room. 

“He doesn’t know how to pack,” Stevie says.

“I _know_ how to pack,” comes David’s voice from his closet. His head pokes around the door, fixing Stevie with a look. “Hi,” he says to Patrick, when he’s decided Stevie has been sufficiently glared at.

“Yeah, because it’s going so well.” Stevie looks pointedly at the clothes on the bed. 

“It’s a process, actually?” David ducks back into the closet and Stevie rolls her eyes. “What does one even pack for a road trip?”

“Clothes, usually,” Stevie says. 

“Underwear’s a good idea. Pants too,” adds Patrick. 

“Maybe even a shirt.”

David reappears, holding a sweater Patrick hasn’t seen him wear in years. “You two are funny. You should have a little act. Travel around and make fun of me in front of an audience, make some money off of it.”

“Only if we split profits three ways,” Stevie says.

“I hate you,” David replies, crossing the room to throw the sweater in the bag on his bed.

Patrick looks at Stevie and shrugs. “Three ways evenly feels pretty fair. Would you prefer 40/30/30?” he asks David.

“I would prefer it if you two didn’t think you were so funny.” David stuffs a pair of pants into his bag with an unnecessary amount of force.

Stevie pulls a face, pretending to look offended. “I’m not trying to be funny. Are you trying to be funny, Patrick?” She tilts her head to the side, lips twitching.

He shakes his head in response, throwing himself down on one of the spots on David’s bed that isn’t covered in clothes. “I need to pay for college somehow,” he says with a shrug. 

“You know, I’m so glad Stevie isn’t joining us on this road trip.”

She sits on the edge of the bed and lets out a snort. “Well, I wasn’t invited.”

David drops the shirt in his hands into the bag, crossing his arms as he looks at Stevie. “Mm, I wonder why.”

“You say that like Patrick isn’t going to give you shit the entire time even though I’m not there.”

“How would you know? Maybe Patrick is nice to me when you’re not around. Maybe you’re a bad influence,” says David primly.

It’s Patrick’s turn to laugh this time, grinning at the delighted look on Stevie’s face. “Yeah, that’s what it is,” he says with an almost serious nod.

“Patrick’s definitely nicer to you when I’m not around, but that’s not what you mean, so,” Stevie mutters, looking at her phone. 

Frowning, Patrick looks up at David, finding a blush high on his cheeks. David coughs and picks up the discarded shirt, folding it carefully. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says back, but there’s little heat in it. 

Patrick slides his eyes back to Stevie, watching her carefully. Her gaze flickers to his, almost guiltily, like she didn’t mean to be heard, before she looks back at her screen, silent. She’s pointedly ignoring him now, so Patrick pushes it aside, knowing he won’t get anything else out of her. “Anyway,” he says, grasping at any idea of a topic change.

“How are you doing post-Rachel?” Stevie doesn’t even look up from her phone as she asks the question, all false casual and feigning curiosity. 

He can see David still over by the closet, hand paused in midair as he reaches for something before he recovers and takes one of the hangers off. When he doesn’t respond immediately, Stevie raises her eyes from her screen, studying him. “Fine.” He jerks a shoulder, bites the corner of his mouth. “I broke up with her so…” 

A smirk slides across Stevie’s face. “So you’ve said.” She raises a dubious eyebrow. “Multiple times. In fact, so many times, it feels like you’re overcompensating? Did you get broken up with a week before your big romantic trip?”

The smug look on her face remains entirely intact even as Patrick fixes her with a look. “Maybe I’m really just doing fine,” he snaps, maybe a little harsher than called for; Stevie stops smirking. He wishes people would stop asking how he is. They’re expecting him to be sad and he isn’t, not at all, and he’s tired of being so ill at ease with his own emotions. 

Stevie doesn’t say anything more about Rachel after that, instead hopping off the bed and pulling all the outfits David has packed out of the bag, telling him he doesn’t need his Balenciagas on a cross-Canada road trip. Patrick relaxes back into the pillows and watches them bicker; it’s warm and familiar, a welcome relief from almost having to talk about Rachel and he settles into the feeling. It’s always been comfortable in David’s room, any discussion of how he should be feeling now firmly put away. He wants to chase that, just exist here without having to feel like he should be anything or do anything. 

David places his hairdryer neatly on top of the bag, standing back with his hands on his hips. Waiting until he looks up, satisfied, to make eye contact with him, Patrick shakes his head at David, a silent no.

David pulls a face when Stevie plucks the hairdryer from the bag and puts it back in the bathroom. “Feeling very ganged up on,” he tells them, but doesn’t move to put the hairdryer back. 

He can feel Stevie’s eyes on him after that, like she’s asking him if he’s sure, if he really wants to be in a confined space with David for that long. She gives up eventually when he pointedly doesn’t look her way. His mom had been dubious too; he doesn’t need to have this conversation twice, especially not with Stevie, who is frighteningly good at reading him and tripping him up into letting something slip, even the smallest hint. She hasn’t ever said anything to him, not even when he snapped at her for no reason after she and David hooked up. He wants to keep it that way.

If she knows, if she sees him looking at David a beat too long, too excited to have all this time alone with him stretched out before them, then she’s not letting on. He’s not sure if he should feel grateful or terrified.

David sends him a nervous sort of smile as he puts his skincare into his bag and Patrick tries to think about how David seems to be trying—he’s not packing half the things they’re telling him not to, and he’s being more discerning than expected, fitting it all into two bags. He’s complaining only fifty percent less than Patrick expected and he feels like he’s expending all this nervous energy toward hoping it lasts. He doesn’t want to find himself on the highway a week’s drive away from home in a fight with his best friend and there’s a limit to his patience. 

He badly wants it to be fun for David. He tries to focus on the way David’s brow is knit, the way he’s biting the corner of his mouth; he’s thinking hard, trying to make this work. That’s what he’s going to focus on.


	2. don't delete the kisses (wolf alice)

Patrick pulls up to David’s early the day he and Rachel were supposed to leave. David isn’t outside, which isn’t surprising, but it’s too early to ring their doorbell, so Patrick gets out of the van and calls him on his phone, leaning against the side and looking up at David’s bedroom window. 

“Please tell me you’re awake,” he says when David picks up. 

“Good morning, obviously I’m awake since I picked up.” He sounds like he’s just rolled out of bed. 

“Do I need to come inside and pull you out of bed?”

There’s a rustling and a low groan. “No, ‘m coming, ‘m coming.”

“This is going to be fun,” Patrick says. 

“You can’t see me right now, but I’m flipping you off,” David says, then hangs up. He’s out the door fifteen minutes later, which is half an hour shorter than Patrick expected. He has his backpack on one shoulder and a duffle in the other, wearing sweatpants and a sweater that might cost more than the van itself. 

He opens the back doors, putting David’s bags next to his own and trying not to notice the way David’s eyes linger on the mattress and pillows spread out in the back. “You really went… All out for her,” David says, taking in the string lights, the knit blankets his mom gave him at the last minute. 

Patrick pulls the door shut, twisting the keys in his hand and walking around the car to the driver’s side just so he doesn’t have to look at David. “Yeah, I guess,” he says finally, which is a lie, a bad one; he should have been packing last night instead of cramming the good blankets into the car, replacing the camping pillows with more comfortable ones from his room. It’s about comfort, he tells himself. Rachel’s family camps, she’s used to sleeping bags and camping mattresses. David isn’t. He gets in the car.

“It’s… nice,” David says diplomatically. Patrick can tell it’s a lie too. His gaze flickers to meet Patrick's and he adds, quickly, “Cramped.”

“We can stop in motels every few nights,” Patrick tells him. “I know you’d prefer every night, and in something better than a motel, but I can’t really split, and I don’t want your parents—”

“I don’t want them paying either,” David says quickly. Patrick’s brow furrows at that, hand hovering over the ignition. “Motels and a mattress in the back of a van are acceptable.”

“So glad it lives up to your standards,” he says, even if he knows it doesn’t. David is shifting in his seat as they pull away from his house, not even bothering to put on music. Patrick wants to ask him why he doesn’t want his parents paying. He’s never had a problem with it, even if Patrick refuses to let David cover him unless absolutely necessary. 

He’s looking out the window, chin in his hand and not speaking at all, which means he doesn’t want to, which means Patrick shouldn’t ask. Which doesn’t mean he won’t.

They make a pact that David will do the late night driving while Patrick does the early mornings, pulling over to campgrounds to sleep. He makes David promise he won’t sleep through all the times Patrick has to drive, only half-serious and knowing how much effort it’s going to take to get David awake so that they can actually make it back home in two weeks and not four. 

He stays awake for the first leg of the drive, surprising Patrick. It’s before eight in the morning, hours before David would wake up on summer vacation. He had expected to put on a podcast, let David sleep before their next stop in a few hours. Instead, David looks out the window before deciding he’s bored and he puts on music.

Patrick doesn’t recognize the first few songs from the six-hour playlist they made with Stevie. The music is much more like David than it’s like Patrick, but he likes it, likes the way it feels to have David beside him curating the queue with the windows down at the start of summer. “What playlist is this?” he asks after the third Whitney Houston song in half an hour comes on.

He can see David glance at him out of the corner of his eye, hesitating over something Patrick can’t place. “I made another one,” he says after a pause. “After you invited me.”

Patrick’s lips quirk into a smile. “After you invited yourself.”

“Okay, but I don’t see you complaining so…” 

He isn’t.

“I like it,” he says, seeing David’s head snap to his in his peripheral. “The playlist. It’s good.”

David wavers again, looking back at the road before them. “Yes, well. There’s only so much Bob Dylan I can handle.”

“Even amounts of Dylan and Mariah, David, you promised.”

He gets a dubious look sent in his direction for that. “You say that as if you don’t love her as much as I do,” says David archly. He’s right, but Patrick isn’t admitting that to him. “Also? I made no such promise.”

“Will you make it now?”

“Absolutely not.”

… 

Three hours in, with David driving and halfway through a true-crime podcast he won’t stop talking through, they pass a sign that reads Moon River, four miles, and Patrick scrambles for his phone. David’s gaze flickers from the sign to Patrick before returning to the road.

“No,” he says quickly. “No, no, no, you will not—”

It’s too late; Frank Sinatra starts playing over the speakers and Patrick can’t help but sing along. He doesn’t even try to sing badly, knowing it’ll only bother David more if he sings well, even as David reaches blindly for his phone. 

Patrick keeps it out of reach, laughing even as he’s trying not to. "Two drifters, off to see the wor—David, watch the road!” 

“ _You_ watch the road,” David snaps, hitting Patrick in the face as he throws his arm across his chest, leaning as far as he can.

“You’re the one—stop it!” He can’t help it; he’s laughing again, giving up on singing along entirely to twist away from David. “You’re the one who’s driving, you know that, right?” 

“How much longer is this road trip again?” David asks, sliding back into a normal driver’s position and staring at the road as the song fades out. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want to turn around?” Patrick asks him.

David shakes his head, flustered even as he knows the question was anything but serious. “No, but only if you swear no more singing along for the entirety of the trip.”

“See I could swear,” Patrick says, pretending to think, “But then I’d be lying.”

He watches as the thin line of David’s lips curls upward before he manages to school his face into a neutral expression. 

He keeps with David’s request, keeping his mouth shut even when _Ring of Fire_ comes on, smiling at David, smug and innocent all at once, when David looks at him and narrows his eyes, like he’s expecting Patrick to break into song at any moment. He doesn’t. What he does do is signal to David to exit the highway, ignoring David’s inquisitive look as they pull onto a dirt road.

David is looking around suspiciously, sending furtive looks at Patrick every now and then. “So this road trip is an elaborate plan to murder me in the woods,” he says when Patrick tells him to pull into a dirt parking lot in a clearing.

He snorts and gives David a long look before saying, “Yes, I’m murdering you in a parking lot for a national park that has four other cars parked in it.”

David sniffs, but gets out of the car anyway, following Patrick around the back of the car with his arms crossed. “I wouldn’t put it past you,” he mutters as Patrick starts to dig around in his bag. “What exactly are we doing here?”

He finds his bathing suit, holding it up with a grin. “We’re going swimming, David,” he tells him, watching at least five different reactions cross his face. It shouldn’t be as endearing as it is. 

“ _Where_?” David asks, looking around like he’s expecting to see a swimming pool in the middle of the forest. 

Patrick blinks at him. “In the river,” he says, trying as hard as he can to swallow a laugh at the new faces David pulls, which could best be described as disbelief. 

He’s made a pact with himself to be patient this trip, patient with David and how he won’t want to do any of the things Patrick has researched, patient with himself for thinking about how badly he wants to see David shirtless. It’s far from the first time but it feels strangely novel to go swimming with David so far from home, with only strangers around them. They’ll be unrecognizable. Patrick will be unrecognizable. He can’t wait. 

David narrows his eyes, like he’s weighing his options. Patrick lets him, perfectly happy to go swimming while David sits on a rock on the shore. “ _F_ _ine_ ,” he says after a beat. “But only because your girlfriend broke up with you and you’re sad about it.”

Patrick doesn’t manage to hold back his laugh this time. “I broke up with her, but sure, David,” he says, feeling victorious. David ducks his head, hiding his face as he looks through his bag. Patrick doesn’t mention the fact that David had thought to pack a bathing suit. 

David does sit on a boulder at the edge of the river, dipping a toe in every now and then as Patrick flicks water at him and floats downstream before swimming to the edge and rejoining David at the little patch of sand. He’s going to swim eventually, Patrick knows this. He knows this because David owns categories of swimsuits; he has a few for sitting by the Roses' pool, and a few for when Stevie and Patrick force him to go in. He’s wearing the one he wears when he goes swimming.

Which means Patrick doesn’t feel too bad about grabbing David’s ankle and pulling at it when David lingers on the rock too long, overthinking it and muttering about river fish. He doesn’t make it off the rock despite Patrick’s tug, but it’s a close thing, pulling a pout that’s nearing a real smile. 

“I’m being _bullied_ ,” he says as Patrick kicks back, splashing him with a grin. 

If he overthinks it for too long, he’ll never get in, so Patrick pretends to get out of the water, sinking his toes into the sandy bottom and standing, running a hand through his hair and rubbing the water from his eyes. When he looks up, David is playing with the hem of his swimsuit, looking down, intent and focused. His cheeks are red in the bright summer sun and it makes Patrick want to dunk his head underwater to clear the buzzing in his mind, get rid of the blush on his cheeks. 

He satisfies himself with watching as David slips off the rock and into the water, swimming with his head carefully above water. He turns around to swim alongside him. The current isn’t strong enough to carry them too far, so they mostly float on their backs, David’s eyes closed as he tilts his head back. Patrick watches him, thinking about the beads of water on his lashes, the line of his shoulders. He goes underwater, shaking his head to rid himself of whatever he’s imagining—pulling David by the waist to kiss him, tasting the water on his lips, pushing his wet hair back from his eyes. 

When he surfaces, David is treading water, watching him. He blinks the water from his eyes, refocusing, and by the time he does, David has looked away, looking at the pines lining the shore. 

He needs a distraction. Swimming was supposed to be the distraction, just one of the many friend-things Patrick has planned for the trip, serving as reminders of why nothing can happen, why he can’t lose David. He needs this in his life, he thinks, this ease and comfort; he can’t risk it. He needs a better distraction. It doesn’t take much to convince David to swim to the bridge he noticed not far down the river, letting the current push them along. It does take convincing to get David to climb it so they can jump off.

There are other people jumping off and the water is deep enough to jump, clearly, but David treads water, looking at Patrick standing on the shore, barefoot and dripping. “I just don’t feel like bleeding out in a river today?” he tells Patrick, eyes flickering between the ledge of the bridge and the water below it. 

“That’s cool,” Patrick says. He’s entirely sure that David will end up following him, so he walks slowly and waits at the ledge of the bridge, watching as David chews on his lower lip, thinking hard. He doesn’t swim toward the edge, so Patrick adds, “Okay, well, I’m going to jump.”

David’s eye roll is extreme enough that Patrick can see it from his place on the bridge, and he grins widely as David swims to the shore. He lets out a groan, pretending to sound more annoyed than he is, and says, “ _Fine_ ,” like Patrick is forcing him to get out of the water. He reaches Patrick, gripping the railing of the bridge tightly behind him. “I’m leaning into discomfort this trip,” he tells him, though he doesn’t sound very happy about it.

Patrick says, “Are you?”

“Yeah, but don’t push it.” He points a finger in Patrick’s face and Patrick does his best to nod seriously, lips twitching. 

David’s eyes are still flicking down nervously, so Patrick nudges him lightly to get his attention. David tears his eyes away from the river. “You want me to go first?” he asks. 

He can see David’s mouth twist as he considers it. He ends up nodding. 

David does jump, eventually, looking disgruntled, wet hair falling over his eyes as he glares at Patrick, who can’t stop laughing. David swims toward him, pushing water in his direction, getting it in Patrick’s open mouth. He spits it out and ducks underwater, swimming away and coming up breathless. He can hear David behind him, yelling and laughing as he chases him.

The sun is just peeking over the tops of the trees when they get out, sending long shadows across the ground and making them shiver. He passes David a towel and watches him flinch every time a mosquito flies near him. They have to make a break for it to the car, getting in still wet and panting.

They change in the back one at a time, Patrick looking up where they can find food in the town nearby as David struggles to pull on his pants, hitting his head and swearing more than once. “Need help?” Patrick jokes, before he can stop himself. His eyes flicker to the rearview mirror before he can stop them too, just catching sight of David looking up, still shirtless and wide-eyed.

“Hilarious.”

Patrick just smirks and goes back to his phone, happy to be in warm, dry clothes. 

The diner they stop at for dinner is entirely empty at six-thirty, a teenaged waiter slouched on one of the stools at the counter, not looking up from his phone. David looks like he wants to stretch napkins all the way across the faux-leather booth they settle in so he doesn’t have to touch anything. It reminds Patrick of the late-night diner the cast of the school play always goes to after shows, except dirtier and empty of loud high-schoolers. The only sound in the whole place is the radio in the kitchen announcing the weather and the little noises David keeps letting out when he comes across a new, unappealing menu item. Neither of them orders meat. 

“Well, this bodes well for the rest of the trip,” David says, handing the menu back between his thumb and forefinger. 

“Loving the optimism, David,” he says back, though he’s starting to agree. He wonders if the grilled cheese was a mistake.

Patrick turns his plate so the side with the fries faces David, even though they look worryingly limp; David eats half of them anyway, pushing his pickle toward Patrick. The radio switches from the weather to a rock station and the horrified look that crosses David’s face when he hears Nickelback playing on the speakers.

“ _Why_?” He looks like he wants to leave half his plate behind and drive away. “It’s like they’re specifically trying to get me to leave without paying.”

Patrick pops a fry into his mouth and grimaces as he chews and looks around the diner. “That’s definitely what they’re doing,” he says.

“Do you think they read my mind?” David tilts his head to the side, deep in thought. “Just rooted around in there and picked out all my least favorite qualities in a restaurant and this place just appeared out of thin air just to drive me up a wall?”

Patrick considers this for a moment. “Yes, I think that’s exactly what they did.”

The last straw for David is the chocolate milkshake. It comes clumpy, with swirls of chocolate syrup in what’s clearly just vanilla ice cream. “I mean _what’s the point_? If I wanted a vanilla milkshake with chocolate syrup, I would have ordered that. Chocolate ice cream isn’t even more expensive than vanilla! Why put it on the menu if you don’t even have chocolate ice cream in your freezer?” He pauses, moving the straw around the glass and regarding it with disdain. “How hard is it to make a milkshake that doesn’t have globs of ice cream in it? It’s like, the easiest dessert to make.”

It should be annoying, to sit across from David and listen to him complain about their meal, and it partly is. But whatever irritation Patrick is feeling is smothered by an overwhelming sense of comfort in it all. It feels right to have David across from him in a diner with questionable food safety practices in rural Canada, like this was how he was supposed to end up all along, on a trip with his best friend who really should be miserable but somehow isn’t. The urge to reach across the table and still David’s waving hands, holding them in his own, hits Patrick so unexpectedly, his hands twitch like they want to move of their own accord toward David.

He puts his fork down, moving his hands to fold in his lap, safe under the table.

David pretends to have food poisoning when they get back to the van, parked in a campground with RV’s and a few tents. He’s clutching his stomach and wondering aloud if you can get food poisoning from old cheese. Patrick tells him you’d be more likely to die from the mold. 

He turns the string lights on, just for a few minutes so they don’t run out the car battery. It’s enough to help them both change before getting back in. It’s a wide van and it fits a real mattress, a queen-sized one and everything. His uncle had it altered a few years before for his own road trip and it felt perfect for Patrick to take instead of taking all their camping equipment. Rachel had thought it’d be romantic to sleep under the stars. He wouldn’t have minded it. 

But as he watches David crawl into the back of the van, pulling the blankets over himself, he thinks he likes this better.

He can feel David twisting beside him, adjusting to the mattress and cramped space. He punches the pillow a few times and rolls over, deciding to ignore him, until David taps him on the shoulder. He twists his head around without fully facing David, one eyebrow raised. “This was sweet of you to do,” David says, taking him by surprise. “For Rachel, I mean.”

Patrick rolls onto his back, staring at the roof of the van. “Yeah, thanks,” he replies, unsure of what else to say, which feels foreign to think about David. 

David is tangling his hands together, fidgeting but trying not to. “Like this is _nice_.”

He lets himself laugh. “Thanks,” he says, infusing it with as much sarcasm as he can. 

Rolling his eyes, David tries again. “No, I mean, this is _nice_. Not at all like I was expecting? Okay, so a little of what I was expecting. But I imagined more dirt. And bugs. And rugged, camping Patrick.”

He ignores that last part and the thing it does to his heart rate. “It’s the first day, so don’t hold out on more dirt and bugs.”

“Oh, lovely.” David’s voice hitches up an octave, a mark of how badly he’s pretending to be positive. 

He waits it out, waits for David to stop thinking about dirt and bugs. “Thanks for coming with me,” he says, turning onto his side to face him properly, keeping his face, his whole body, a safe distance from David’s. 

David blinks at him, like he’s surprised. “Oh,” he says, several emotions at once that Patrick can’t place falling over his face before he recovers. “You’re welcome,” he says finally, a little awkwardly, like he doesn’t know how else to fill the silence. He swallows, looking like he wants to say more. Patrick waits it out, letting him decide. “I couldn’t let you just get murdered in the woods on your own, so. I had to come.” He jerks his shoulders into a half-shrug, lips curling into a lopsided smile.

Patrick returns it. “So glad you didn’t want me to get murdered in the woods,” he says. “You’re a good friend.”

David wriggles a little, looking proud even though he knows Patrick is kidding. “I know.”

“And look at it this way,” he says fairly, “Now we can get murdered together.”

David hums, sucking his lips between his teeth. “Mmm, love that.”

They settle back into their pillows wordlessly, pulling the blankets up to their necks. Patrick lets his eyes fall shut and tries not to listen to the sound of David breathing. He counts his own breath instead. He thinks he hears David say goodnight, just below a whisper, but he can’t be sure. 

… 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Maybe it’s unfair to wait until he’s driving and David is fiddling with the music with nowhere else to go to ask him, but Patrick does it anyway, because he wouldn’t put it past David to wander into a cornfield to avoid the conversation.

“Mmh?” He doesn’t look up from his phone. “Talk about what?”

Patrick fixes him with a look before looking back at the road, squinting in the morning sun. “Why you seized the chance to come on a road trip I know you don’t want to be on for two weeks your last summer at home,” he clarifies. 

He doesn’t need to look at him any longer to know that David is worrying his lip between his teeth, eyes darting around and unable to stay still. “Maybe I just really enjoy your company,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Patrick says with a laugh. “That’s it.”

It takes a while for David to get there. “I didn’t get into NYU,” he says finally, looking down at his lap. Patrick turns to look at him a beat too long, too shocked at first to look back at the road. He has a million questions, starting with the fact that it’s June and David got his acceptance back in April. He doesn’t say anything else.

“Want to elaborate?” Patrick asks, tentatively, wary of spooking him.

“Like. _I_ didn’t get into NYU,” David says, which doesn’t help at all. Patrick nods, as if he understands, and keeps his eyes on the road. “You know how my computer broke last week? I borrowed my dad’s, just for college emails. It was still logged into his and there were all of these emails, back and forth with him and admissions, in February? Reminders of all the money my parents gave, all the connections they had. He really had to push, I guess. They gave in eventually. Clearly.” He finishes with a short laugh, no humor in it at all, and not all like David. 

“Which is _normal_ for families like mine, I knew if I got in, it’d be because of them, partly.” The way David is talking, Patrick doesn’t quite believe that he knew. “But after you got in early at U of T, with all that scholarship money, and your parents were so proud I… I asked, I wanted them to let me do it on my own. They said they would. Promised they’d let me have this on my own. My mom told me she was _proud_ that I was forging my own path without their help.

“Clearly they didn’t think I could do it on my own. I probably couldn’t.”

Patrick has known the Roses his entire life, ever since Johnny made David do Little League and David got hit in the face on the first day. Patrick had been the only one who didn’t laugh. It’s the same thing, Patrick thinks, of them thinking they know what’s best for David without asking or thinking about it. As far as terrible parents go, they aren’t nearly as bad as they could be. There are worse things parents can do than try to get their kids into college. But. 

“I’m sorry,” Patrick says finally. “You deserved the truth from them.”

He can see David’s head snap up to face him. “You’re not going to tell me to stop complaining that I got into NYU because my parents made a few calls?”

“I mean, I am,” Patrick says, truthfully. “You are extremely lucky.”

David lets out a frustrated noise. “I _know_ ,” he mutters, sounding impatient with himself.

“But you can still be hurt by them lying to you and making you think that you’re not good enough,” Patrick tells him, badly wanting to pull over so he can take David’s shaking hands in his. “David, you _are_ good enough.”

That gets a short laugh out of him. “If I was, they wouldn’t have felt the need to pay their way into college for me.”

Patrick frowns, biting the inside of his cheek as he thinks on what to say, what he’d like to hear if he was David. “I don’t think their decision to shelter you from things like this and make things easier for you says anything about you. I think it says more about them,” he says slowly. “Fuck ‘em, honestly.”

David turns to him, surprised. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Fuck ‘em for making you feel this way,” Patrick says, glancing at him quickly. David is gaping at him. “They’re your parents, they should make you feel supported and successful on your own.”

He can tell David is still surprised by his words and he chuckles nervously. He’s never once said a bad word against the Roses, except for mindless complaints about getting told to go to bed early on sleepovers or when Johnny didn’t let David spend the night one time just because. He feels guilty about it, to say that about his friends’ parents, people he knows and cares for. But he thinks it might be what David needs to hear right now. Later, Patrick can figure out how to say something mature and eloquent, a reminder of how lucky he is but right now, they’re going to be kids about it. 

“Yeah,” David says. “Fuck ‘em.”

His mood improves after that, like all he needed was a half hour to grumble and whine about his parents. Patrick knows it’s not over, knows that it probably pokes at insecurities David doesn’t want poked at and how they’ll probably talk about it more at some point, or that they should talk about it more at some point. But he’s not sure how to right now, when all he wants to do is whatever he can to get him to forget about his parents, listen to bad music, roll the windows down and see how long it’ll take for David to threaten to throw himself from the car. 

… 

The gas station he buys the disposable camera at has a stand with postcards and tourist attractions on it. There’s a giant sculpture of an apple on a few of them and Patrick buys them for twenty-five cents each with the disposable camera and a pack of gum. David is filling the car with gas, on the phone with his mother, if the way he’s waving his hands everywhere and glaring at nothing is anything to go by. Patrick keeps his distance, looking for too long at the other postcards. There are a few of some moose and bears, but nothing you couldn’t get at home. He won’t be buying gifts for anyone at a gas station, but David will shove the ones with the giant apple in the glove compartment before putting them in a box in his room carefully. 

By the time he’s been looking at postcards too long to not be considered loitering, David is off the phone, yanking the nozzle out of the car and back into the pump. Patrick approaches quietly, passing him the pack of gum and the postcards. David looks at him, blinking hard. “What are these?” He waves the postcards in Patrick’s face.

“Postcards.”

“Of an apple.”

“A giant apple.”

David considers them, flipping one of them over. “They have apple dumplings here,” he says, looking up at Patrick. “What do you think apple dumplings are?”

Patrick shrugs, getting into the passenger seat as David goes around the other side of the van. “Probably exactly what they sound like,” he says as David turns the van on. “Let’s find out.”

Apple dumplings turn out to be apples rolled in cinnamon sugar, baked in pastry, then smothered in a cider sauce. They’re too sweet for Patrick, but David eats two containers of them and licks the sauce from his fingers. Patrick definitely does not watch him do it, handing him napkins dutifully. 

The sculpture itself is smaller than the pictures make it out to be. Patrick looks up at it, squinting in the sun. He glances at David, who looks perplexed. “Um,” he says, looking around. “What else are you supposed to do here exactly?”

Patrick looks back up at the sculpture, at the people milling around it with apple fritters and caramel apples and cider slushies. “I have… no idea,” he says at last, his gaze coming to settle on David’s face. 

He watches as David looks around again, one hand on his hip. “All right, hand me the camera,” he says, one hand out, palm open. 

He’s David, so he takes his time framing the photo, taking ten before Patrick even has the chance to get in one. “You know those cameras only take like thirty-six pictures, right?” Patrick asks. David flaps a hand in his direction, the camera still held up to his eye. 

“If you even try to look like you’re holding up the giant apple, I’m driving away without you.”

The camera clicks just as Patrick laughs and says, “You know, I wasn’t going to before. But now I think I might.” He pulls the pose anyway, holding his hand out and hoping David is actually framing it so that it looks like he’s holding it, even though it’s far more likely that he’s purposefully making it look like one of those failed tourist shots. He starts to worry about how much film is left and reaches David, snatching it from his hands. “Your turn,” he says, backing up so David is standing between the apple and the camera. 

“No.” David crosses his arms, walking close enough that he takes up the entire viewfinder. “No way.”

“You don’t want memories?”

“I don’t need photos from a disposable to remember things.”

Patrick grins at him. “Oh, but I think I do.”

He manages probably two photos of David where he’s not moving before David walks back in the direction of the gift shop without a look over his shoulder. Patrick waits outside for him, expecting him to come back with more of the apple dumplings. Instead, he’s also holding maple candy and what looks like a hat shaped like a cow with an apple in its mouth. 

His lips are curled upward, sly and pleased with himself as he approaches Patrick, sitting on a bench shaped like a cow. “Imagine Alexis’s face when I tell her this is what I brought back for her.”

“I’m sure she’ll love it,” Patrick tells him, knowing she’ll hate it as much as David does. David pauses and glances disdainfully at where Patrick is sitting, as if he’s just noticed it. “It’s called ‘the Cowch.’” He keeps his mouth carefully neutral.

“Yeah, I won’t be sitting on that?” 

David stays standing, the hat tucked under his arm as he eats the maple candy, steadfastly ignoring Patrick, who doesn’t say anything when the hat falls to the ground as David struggles to put the wrapper in his pocket with full hands. He doesn’t say anything when David nearly drops the third carton of apple dumplings and stands there looking down at his hands as if he’s strategizing how to snack without sitting on the bench. 

He definitely doesn’t say anything when, fed up, David plops himself on the bench beside him, carton of apple dumplings resting on his knees. “Don’t say a word,” he snaps.

“Did I?”

“You didn’t need to.”

Patrick manages to snap a shot of him with an apple dumpling halfway to his mouth, sitting with one leg crossed over the other on the bench. David’s gaze snaps up to meet his at the sound of the shutter. “I hate you.”

In response, Patrick sends him a grin, wide and toothy. He tries not to read into the way that David looks down at his knees, lips twitching.

… 

They’re filling the car up with gas when David asks him about Rachel.

“What do you want to know?” Patrick puts the nozzle back in the gas pump, looking down. The machine spits out his card and he pockets his wallet. David is leaning against the passenger door, eating Twizzlers and watching Patrick.

He goes around the other side of the car so he doesn’t have to look at David, getting in and not waiting for David to do the same before turning on the car. He can tell David is looking at him as he gets in and Patrick pulls away, getting back on the highway. “I guess I just feel like I don’t know why you broke up?”

It makes Patrick want to laugh. “Lots of people break up between high school and college,” he says, even though that’s not the reason they broke up. That’s why he told her he was doing it. He sat in his parents’ car and told her he wanted the chance to get to know himself somewhere else, which was true, but not all the way true. If it was the whole truth, he would have said that he wanted to be someone else entirely, that he didn’t want to be dating Rachel or really any other girls at all, that he wanted to try dating boys, or one boy in particular. But he couldn’t date that one boy in particular. And he didn’t want Rachel to think he never liked her at all. He did like her. A lot. He thinks he would have liked to be friends with her and would have been a better friend to her than he was a boyfriend.

“Yeah,” David says, sounding doubtful. He doesn’t push it. “Want a Twizzler?”

Patrick looks at him. “They taste like plastic.”

He can see David’s jaw drop out of the corner of his eye. “They do not!”

He’s glad to not be talking about Rachel anymore; it hits too close to home. He doesn’t like lying to David. So he laughs and says, “You couldn’t have gotten Snickers? Or at least some Swedish Fish?”

Something lands in his lap. He looks down quickly. “You shouldn’t throw things at me while I’m driving,” he says, moving the jumbo Snickers bar and bag of Swedish fish to the cupholder between the seats. 

David shrugs. “You asked.”

“Did I, though?”

He can see David reaching for the Snickers, which is odd, because David doesn’t like Snickers, hasn’t liked them since they were six because of the way the caramel and peanuts get stuck in his teeth. There’s a crackling sound and David pushes the plastic down so he can take a bite, except he’s pushing it in Patrick’s face. “Take your stupid Snickers,” he says.

Patrick takes a bite, big enough just to spite him. David pulls a face. “Thanks,” he says through the caramel, trying not to smile. 

“If you do want to talk about Rachel, I’m here,” David says suddenly. Patrick is taken aback, having hoped they were done talking about it. “I know I’m _literally_ your only option right now but I like to think I’d be your only option even if other people were in the car.”

It’s true; he loves Stevie, loves his friends from baseball and theater, but he wouldn’t ever talk to them about this. He can barely talk about it with David. His grip tightens on the wheel. “I guess I worried that—that if I didn’t end it now, it’d never end.” It sounds as stupid aloud as it does in his head and he winces. “Which isn’t logical, we’re eighteen. But the way she talked sometimes, the way my parents and her parents talked. Like we would _last_. I—um—I didn’t want to last.”

It’s the most he’s ever said about it aloud and he feels sick about it, sick and guilty for not wanting what everyone else wanted, what Rachel, who he really did like and care about, wanted. 

David hums, thinking hard before he speaks. “Sounds completely unreasonable to not want to spend the rest of your life with your first girlfriend,” he says, nodding seriously before fixing Patrick with a look. “You _can,_ like, not want some things.”

He can see the whites of his knuckles on the wheel and he tries to relax his grip. “I just feel like—I wanted other things so badly. That I didn’t get why I couldn’t bring myself to want her,” he forces out. 

“Well that’s more than a little absurd,” David says quickly. “I don’t know how to tell you that it’s not the end of the world to _not_ want things. In fact, I even say you should want the things you do want.”

His laugh comes out breathless and shaky. He doesn’t tell David that what he’s saying feels reckless in his mind. Instead, he says, with no small degree of sarcasm, “ _Really_?”

David hums his assent and rolls his eyes. “You know, I think you’d have more fun in life if you stopped pretending to be a million years old and actually decided to act your age.”

He thinks about sneaking out after curfew to go out with David and Stevie or to baseball parties, and having his first drink by the Roses’ pool their junior year, going on this road trip, lying to his parents about sleeping at David’s when he was actually at Rachel’s. He feels like he acts his age most of the time. He tells David this.

“M’kay, but you hate it,” David says plainly. “It makes you uncomfortable. You do it sometimes because it’s fun and you want to, but it’s not always fun for you. And you have this _thing_ about expectations, you always have, and you beat yourself up about it for like, no reason, because you’re practically perfect—” David stumbles before continuing as if he hadn’t. “—And you never fuck up like me and really, you don’t have anything to worry about at the end of the day.”

It doesn’t feel that way. It never feels that way. It feels like everyone thinks he’s perfect, like he’s fine and put together, capable, dependable Patrick, more responsible than his classmates, smart but not too smart, nice but not in a fake way. He doesn’t feel like any of those things, or he doesn’t like feeling like any of those things. He had hoped that David, of everyone, would have seen that. “I guess,” he says, jaw clenched. 

He knows that David can sense something is wrong. He’s not being good about hiding it, his face feeling hot, tugging at his collar, heart slamming against his ribs. “You okay?” David asks, brow knit in a frown.

Patrick breathes out, “Yeah,” even though he isn’t. He can focus on the road and ignore whatever tight feeling is happening in his chest. If he just focuses on the road and doesn’t let his vision go blurry, he’ll be fine. 

He feels pressure on his thigh and glances down, seeing David’s hand on his knee. “I think we should pull over,” David says.

“‘M fine,” Patrick says, because he is, once he just can wipe his tears away, he’ll be fine.

David’s hand is steady on his thigh, that’s what Patrick focuses on, that and the lines of the road and keeping the car moving. “Pull over.” David has to say it twice before Patrick turns his turn signal on and pulls over, driving onto the grass and turning off the car, letting his head fall against the wheel. 

He’s vaguely aware of David getting out of the car—why is David getting out of the car? The time between when he’s alone in the car and David makes it to the driver’s side, throwing the door open, stretches like taffy, long and almost unbearable. 

David is unbuckling his seat belt, turning Patrick’s body toward his. He can feel David’s hands on his knees, the pads of his fingers pressing into his thighs. “Hey,” David says, his voice soft and close. “Patrick, I need you to focus on breathing, yeah?”

He sounds winded, a pitch of concern in his voice, and if Patrick wasn’t so distracted by the lack of oxygen, he’d realize that David was panicking too. He’s keeping it together for Patrick, somehow. That’s enough for Patrick to focus on his lungs, not the way his heart is beating against his ribs. He can hear David’s voice telling him in and out, in and out, over and over until Patrick listens. He’s telling him it’ll pass, that it’s temporary and he won’t feel this way forever. He feels like he’s going to feel this way forever. He’s not sure how to make his heart rate slow; it’s not something he can control, he needs to control it, and everything else too. 

David is telling him to follow his hand with his eyes. He brings it down low, raising it slowly as he tells Patrick to inhale. When it’s just above his head, he tells Patrick to exhale, and he brings it down, slow and steady. “Focus on my hand,” David says, the other hand still on his knee, grounding him, connecting him to David.

He’s not sure how long David lowers and raises his hand, but he lets his eyes track the movement, trying to make his lungs cooperate. Eventually, slowly, they do. His brain stops feeling too big for his skull, and he can feel something wet on his cheeks. He raises his hand to touch his fingers there, finding tears. 

When he looks up, David is watching him carefully and he’s rubbing circles with his thumb on the inside of Patrick’s knee. “Hey,” he says after a while, his voice still low. “You okay now?”

Patrick nods, mostly because for the first time in what feels like hours, he doesn’t feel like he’s dying anymore. It’s probably just been minutes. He can feel his cheeks flaming and he wipes at his cheeks, trying to look as casual as he can manage. 

“You’re okay,” David says, not as a question this time, just a reminder.

There’s something thick in Patrick’s throat and something warm in his chest. “Thank you,” he says quietly. It’s gratitude. 

“No problem.”

He inhales deeply, trying to remember how to breathe normally without David guiding him through it. He gets there. “I don’t know where that came from.”

David’s eyebrows fly up. “Could it be shoving down any emotion you didn’t feel was justified over the past eighteen years of your life?” He laughs, a tight, breathy sound. David hesitates, then says, “I’m sorry I told you you had nothing to worry about.”

Patrick’s head snaps up and he finds David looking miserable and stricken with himself. “What—Why would you say that?” he asks.

There’s a jerk to David’s shoulder, a half-hearted shrug as he looks away from Patrick. “Not the best thing to say to a friend when they’re clearly having a crisis,” he mutters. 

“It’s nothing I don’t tell myself every day.”

David looks at him like he’s stupid. “Yeah. Exactly. You didn’t need to like, also hear it from me. I’m supposed to be your best friend.”

“You are. You just stopped me from crashing the van, which feels like a pretty good best friend thing to do.”

There’s that half-shrug again. “Yeah. Well. I didn’t want to die in a car crash because I didn’t recognize a panic attack when it was right in front of me.”

Patrick knows David gets them, and has gotten them his whole life. He thinks about being ten and sleeping over at the Roses’ one night, with Adelina to babysit them and Alexis while their parents were at a benefit. It had been late and Alexis had wanted her parents to call them to say goodnight, except they weren’t picking up their phones. Alexis was young, younger than them, and she hadn’t been worried enough to not go to bed. So Adelina tucked her in and told him and David that they had one more hour of TV time before bed. But David wanted to try calling his parents again, just to make sure they were okay. They had, and then again when they still didn’t pick up. Adelina sent Patrick to get water and when he came back, David was on the floor with his knees pulled to his chest, lower lip trembling as he asked Adelina to call just one more time to make sure they were safe.

He hadn’t been around for all of them, or even most of them, but he knew David still got them. “Are they always like this?” he asks, voice small.

David frowns, like he has to think about it. “Sometimes. It depends. I think they’re different for everyone.”

Patrick nods and they stay quiet like that for a while, just sitting on the side of the highway in silence as Patrick gets his bearings. When his brain feels less fuzzy, when he feels like he can breathe without it hurting, he looks back up at David. “I’m sorry we had to pull over.”

The look David fixes him with is enough to shut him up. “Oh, shut up,” David says, waving a hand. “I’d rather be behind schedule than dead on the side of the road, even if you wouldn’t.”

That brings a real laugh out of him and he’s grateful for it, beginning to feel more like himself, like he can control his limbs and his head better. David reaches out and rubs Patrick’s shoulders with both hands, running them over the knots just over his shoulder blades. It feels nice, and Patrick lets it feel nice, lets David do it for a few minutes longer, until David’s hands are gone, suddenly. 

When he opens his eyes, David is standing, hands stiffly by his side. “Come on, get out, I’m driving,” he tells Patrick, pulling his arm. He resists, but only briefly, because he feels so drained. He folds himself into the passenger seat, wanting nothing more than to fall asleep against the window. 

It doesn’t help when David puts on something slow and peaceful, not at all what he usually listens to. “I’ll wake you up when we get there,” he says, but Patrick is already asleep.

… 

David does wait until they get to the next campground to wake him, a light hand on Patrick’s shoulder. He blinks his eyes open, smelling food. “What time is it?” His voice cracks from disuse. It’s dark out, much darker than it had been when he fell asleep.

“Around eight-thirty, I think? I didn’t want to wake you.” He sounds apologetic. “I got dinner.” 

He watches David reach into the back for a bag with a big yellow M on it. He places the smell he caught earlier: french fries, a burger, and some chicken tenders maybe. He can feel his stomach tighten in anticipation. “Let’s eat outside?”

David nods and gets out, making his way to the picnic tables not far from where they’ve parked. There are a few other groups settled in, but they’re all in their tents or cars; it’s late for dinner for when you’re camping. David passes him a burger in wax paper and sets the little cup of fries and box of McNuggets between them. He arranges the sauces—one of each flavor, like always—in a straight line in the middle of the table, opening them one by one. 

“I don’t think I’ve had a Big Mac since middle school,” David says, looking down at his food like he shouldn’t be as excited as he is. He looks vaguely hesitant, but there’s an undercurrent of anticipation too.

Patrick eats his too quickly, rolling his wrapping into a ball and wiping his hands on a napkin when David is only halfway through his own burger; he doesn’t say anything, just pushes the McNuggets toward him.

Patrick is careful to leave him three. 

He feels wired from his too-long nap and the junk food, and they sit at the picnic table long after they’re finished eating, until the sun has completely gone down and they can see the stars.

It’s the clearest night they’ve had so far and Patrick lies down on the bench of the picnic table to look up at the sky. David tilts his head upward, ignoring Patrick when he says he’ll go sore; it takes five minutes of looking at the stars and listening to Patrick point out constellations before he’s lying down on the bench too.

The constellations he knows are the ones his dad taught him on family fishing trips, lying on a blanket on the ground, his parents on either side of him, pointing at the stars. His mom would badly hide her laughs as his dad made up constellations, telling him about how the collection of five stars was the ghost of the cat they had when Patrick was a baby. Patrick didn’t believe him, but he remembered the made-up constellations just as well as the real ones. 

He points them out to David, but they’re too far away for David to follow his finger. He gets impatient, pushing himself up and telling Patrick they have to be at least a few inches closer for this to work. The table itself is too narrow for them both to lie down and David refuses to lie on the ground, so they end up perpendicular to it, knees bent and feet resting on the bench, sides pressed together.

He settles into Patrick's side, tilting his head so he can follow the finger pointing out Casseopeia. 

David makes up a few of his own, pointing to one of his mother’s Louboutins, the horse Alexis had until she stopped riding it and they had to sell it, the outline of Portugal for Adelina. Patrick can’t figure out any of them, but he nods along anyway and only laughs at David three times. 

He can feel his breath on his cheek in the cool summer air, the heat of his body beside him. He feels unbalanced, one side of him lit up at David’s touch, warm and soft all over, and the other exposed and open. He wants more of him, he thinks as he watches David squint at the sky, pointing at something Patrick isn’t looking at. He’s going to have to look away soon, when David turns back to him, looking for Patrick’s smile; he doesn’t want to. He wants to look at David in the light of the one lamp on the campground and from the tents around them and from the moon, feeling reckless and like he doesn’t care about the consequences anymore.

He’s going to, until he’s caught.


	3. love you for a long time (maggie rogers)

He wishes he had a distraction, because having David flip through a magazine beside him, lower lip between his teeth, is not helping him focus on the road. He can’t stop thinking about kissing him. He wonders if he should pull over. He can’t focus on the road like this; he has to.

His jaw clicks as he clenches it and he wishes there was traffic to pay attention to instead of just one long yellow line and a lot of pine trees.

David is intent on his magazine, which Patrick thinks is good, because he can feel the tension in his shoulders radiating off of him, see the whites of his knuckles on the wheel. If he looked at him, David would know in seconds. David can’t know, if he doesn’t already. The thought has crossed his mind more than once, the terrible notion of David seeing right through him and not saying anything at all, content to remain friends as Patrick argues himself in circles. If he could tell, if he saw every sign Patrick tried to send his way, and he hasn’t said anything, then it has to be nothing, this crush just a fantasy where he loves Patrick the way he wants to be loved. Not the real David, who sits beside him reading and doesn’t say anything when Patrick sits too close, when he pushes his fries wordlessly in his direction, when he rests his head on his shoulder, stares at the back of his head as he sleeps in the back of the van.

The real David, the one that’s sitting next to him and will be for the next week, has walls, high ones Patrick watched him build, but he wears his emotions on his sleeve like he doesn’t care. Patrick knows him. That David could keep something this big from him isn’t an option. 

There’s a sign that says _JUMBO THE ELEPHANT: EXIT 7, FIVE MILES_ with a picture of an elephant in a circus above it. Patrick takes the exit. 

“This better not be as disappointing as the apple,” David says under his breath as they drive into the tiny town. Patrick just glances at him, then reminds him he ate three containers of apple dumplings happily. David huffs, but looks out the window to hide his smile.

Jumbo turns out to be a sculpture of an elephant on the side of the road with a few people taking pictures in front of it and not much else. Patrick takes a pamphlet from the tourist kiosk, skimming it briefly. There’s a few paragraphs about the elephant’s impact on the town, a line about the story “weaving itself into the psyche of a community,” which feels like a little much for an elephant that died in the nineteenth century. 

David has his arms crossed as he looks up at it, the same mystified look on his face as when they stopped at the giant apple and then again at the vastly underwhelming giant nickel they drove by the day before. “I don’t get it,” he announces, turning to Patrick. “What does the pamphlet say?”

Handing it to David, he shrugs and says, “Not much. The usual town pride stuff. It’s a sad story, I guess.”

He watches as David skims the pamphlet too, then frowns and starts over, reading more intentionally, an infinite combination of emotions crossing his face from horror, to disgust, to distress. When he’s done, he looks up at Patrick, wide-eyed and aghast. Patrick’s lips twitch into a questioning grin, trying to keep it under control. “What?” he asks.

“He hugged his trainer when he died,” David says, as if that explains anything. When Patrick’s face doesn’t change in the way David expected it would, he adds, gesticulating wildly, “He spent _years_ in captivity and then was just shipped off to Canada—which is probably too cold for him—and put in front of screaming audiences, and then he just gets _hit_ by a train and _dies._ In his trainer’s arms. It’s devastating.” He pauses, taking a breath. “Why are you so calm?”

“Because it’s an elephant that died over a hundred years ago? It’s a sad story but—”

“Patrick, people _wept_ when he left England. Like, openly weeping.”

Patrick’s lips quirk into a smile. “I feel like you’re going to openly weep.”

David fixes him with a look. “Don’t be glib.”

“Oh, but you’re making it so easy.”

“I’m so glad my grief is amusing to you,” he snaps.

That draws an incredulous laugh from Patrick’s lips. “Your _grief_ , David, he’s an elephant that died in—” he pauses, looking at the pamphlet. “1885. It’s not like you met him.”

David looks away, toward the statue. “Maybe I feel like I have.” His tone tells Patrick he knows how he sounds and he’s doing it on purpose. Patrick grins at him, willing to play along. “It’s not my fault you’re dead inside, or whatever.”

“Not sure not crying over an elephant who got hit by a truck makes me dead inside, but okay.”

David inhales deeply, closing his eyes before opening them and saying, with no small amount of impatience. “A _train_ , Patrick, he got hit by a train.”

“Right. A train.” 

He puts his hands up in defense, watching as David looks back at the pamphlet and reads from it, after checking to see if Patrick is listening, which he is. “‘As he lay silently on the track, the big elephant reached out and slipped his trunk into Matthew Scott's hand. The man who had been his closest human companion for 14 years did what he could to comfort the creature he loved, but within 15 minutes, Jumbo was dead.’ An eyewitness said ‘The animal reached out his long trunk, wrapped it around the trainer and then drew him down to where that majestic head lay blood stained in the cinders. Scotty cried like a baby. Five minutes later, they lifted him from the lifeless body. That night Scotty laid down beside the body of his friend. At last exhausted from the strain, he fell asleep.’ I mean, how can you not—” He breaks off at the sight of Patrick. “Are you… crying?”

Patrick wipes the back of his hands across his eyes and sniffs. “Yeah okay,” he says, swallowing hard as he looks up at the elephant. It’s less the elephant than it is the exhaustion, but his eyes are definitely stinging. “I get it now.”

David looks far more victorious than he should to see Patrick crying over Jumbo the elephant, but he wraps an arm around Patrick anyway, clearly trying not to laugh. There’s a long pause where they just both look at the statue in silence before: “I mean, the death is sad enough as it is, but what kind of monsters take an elephant from his natural habitat and take him to _England_ then _Ontario?_ The real tragedy is dying in rural Ontario.”

Patrick takes one last look at Jumbo and nods. “Agreed,” he says, and tries not to think about the way David’s arm stays around him as they walk back to the van.

There are dark clouds moving in when they get in the car and David pulls away from Jumbo, but he thinks the rain might hold off until after they can manage to eat dinner at a picnic table at the campground. It doesn’t.

Patrick returns from the takeout pizza place—tiny, grimy, and with no seats or tables, just a counter and a bored teen at the register—wet and wary of what he’s going to come back to in the van. He gets into the passenger seat and rests the pizza box on his knees; it warms his legs, soaked through his jeans.

David looks between the pizza, the hair plastered to Patrick’s forehead and the rain pelting the windshield. He glances toward the back, where they can at least spread out, and says, “If we must.”

It feels like sitting on the floor of David’s living room, eating pizza in front of the TV the first night they were allowed to be left at home alone with no babysitter—thrilling, almost, in its smallness. It even feels like David’s twelfth birthday, where they did have pizza, but made by a chef the Roses hired and cooked in the pizza oven they erected in the back yard. He still remembers Stevie asking David if they could put pineapple on one of them and the way David looked at her, full of twelve-year-old indignation at the thought of putting pineapple on a Neapolitan style pizza. 

They sit cross-legged with the box between them, newspapers Patrick grabbed from the gas station spread out over the covers. David makes fun of him for not folding his pizza as he eats it, like always and Patrick throws a napkin at his face, pointing out the grease on his chin. 

He licks the sauce from his fingers when he’s done and looks back up at David, whose head snaps down. He starts picking at the cheese on his half-finished last slice and it’s heavily quiet. “So eating in the back where we sleep isn’t incorrect?” Patrick asks before David really closes up.

David’s eyes slide up, looking inexplicably relieved, like he was waiting for a distraction. “Less incorrect than eating in the rain.”

… 

He takes David on a hike the next day. He wants to cross off at least one thing from his original plan and this hike is one of them; nearly a week in and he needs some way to expel this energy. Hokey tourist attractions and finding increasingly weird music to listen to isn't enough. He's thrumming with it, from all the effort of holding back. It isn't just digging his nails into his palms when David swings too far into his orbit, it isn't just biting the inside of his cheek every time he wants to say something bold and obvious and flirty. It's sharing a space as small as they are with anyone, the constant contact, the ever-present human interaction. He needs the hike.

It takes pulling a pout and slyly mentioning breaking up with a long-term girlfriend for David to agree.

David is driving, telling Patrick about the damage a hike will probably do to his sneakers, which are a far cry from Patrick’s Nike running shoes. He plays along, because David is being ridiculous and dramatic and not really all that serious about it, but it needles at him when they arrive and David pretends to almost miss the turn.

He looks out the window when David turns to him, smirking and waiting for Patrick to hit him back with a quip; he doesn’t. 

He’s complaining again before they even start walking, wondering if they have enough water while at the same time informing Patrick that their bags are too heavy and couldn’t they at least take something heavy out? To shut him up, Patrick takes his water bottle. 

A part of him expected snapping and bickering, but that had been when he was going on this road trip with Rachel, and he doesn’t want to spend the walk up doing anything but keeping his mouth shut and hoping David does the same. It’s too much to expect of David, who has turned silent and sullen behind him, like he wants Patrick to know that he’s holding himself back from complaining.

It makes it worse, to know that David wants to him to know the effort he’s putting into being at least a little bit amenable. He doesn’t want him to be in a bad mood at all, not even because he wants David to have a good time. He wants to do what he wants to do without feeling like David is putting up with it or with him. He’s feeling wildly selfish and incredibly annoyed, unsure if it’s directed more at David or himself.

He takes it out on a tree root or two and keeps walking, several paces ahead of David so he won’t hear his sighs. 

He’s winded when they reach the end, though it was barely two miles and he sits, waiting for David to trudge up the path after him. When he reaches Patrick, he glances at the view briefly before looking back down the path, not bothering to hide his longing. Patrick has to grit his teeth, trying not to breathe out too loudly. He pushes himself up to his feet and walks past David, back down the path. He can hear him follow silently, clearly in a better mood now they’re going downhill, but Patrick still keeps his distance. 

He offers David water halfway down, stopping and reaching into his bag. David takes it and gives him a smile in return, tentative and grateful. Maybe it’s the granola bar he ate on the way down, giving him energy and sugar and a better mood, but Patrick smiles back over the rim of his own water bottle. 

David doesn’t hand his bottle back, carrying it down the rest of the mountain. It’s barely a gesture, but at least its a mark that David knows what he’s been doing.

And when they get back to the car, David hands him the aux cable and says, “Play whatever you want, I’ll drive.”

He’s trying.

… 

Heading for their last stop, just before they turn around and drive home, David’s mood sours, any uncharacteristic optimism fading into irritation after the hike and at the gas station not having good snacks, the motel near where they’re stopping being fully booked, and running low on his face wash. Patrick doesn’t say anything, keeping his hands at ten and two on the wheel, jaw clicking any time David twists in his seat far more dramatically than he needs to. They’re hundreds of miles from home and the tiny, traitorous voice in the back of Patrick’s head that told him David would hate this at the start is crowing victoriously. 

David has his earphones in, refusing to listen to whatever Patrick wants to play, which is how Patrick knows it’s bad. He taps his fingers against the wheel and bites the inside of his cheek. He should say something. The right thing to do, the healthy thing for their friendship, would be to say something. 

He thinks if he says something he might yell. 

David curls his legs under himself on the seat, closing his eyes. Which means Patrick is going to spend the next four hours until their next stop with nothing but his music. The bitter, impatient part of him wants to wake David up; he knows himself and David well enough to know that it would only make it worse. He lets him sleep.

He’s still asleep an hour later when Patrick pulls over to stretch; he doesn’t even stir as Patrick turns off the car and gets out. There’s a beautiful view on this stretch of the highway, mountains in the distance, a farmhouse not far down a dirt road. The air is crisper up here, cooler even in late June. 

He’d like to live up here, in a small town, maybe where no one knows him. College doesn’t feel like enough of a reset button, too close to home for him to try to be someone else. 

He hadn’t known, not until he broke up with Rachel, how badly he wanted to be someone else. He’s not sure why things feel so hard; things shouldn’t be this hard for him. He’s had an easy life, good parents, good friends, good grades. It feels a lot like trying too hard. These are normal things to accomplish for him but they feel cavernous sometimes, like it takes every ounce of him to do the right thing, get the nice girlfriend, be honest with his parents. 

The trip doesn’t feel hard. It feels like relief. He wonders if it’s a bad thing he feels so free so far away from home, if he can maintain whatever this unfamiliar feeling of peace is when he gets home. It’s peaceful, is what it is—even when they turn the volume all the way up and when they stop in old, mostly abandoned towns that feel like they’re haunted. He’s tired, in need of a real shower, and sick of staring at a highway for hours on end and of David being in too bad of a mood to behave like a person, let alone a good friend. But he can breathe here.

He sits on the hood of the car for several minutes too long, knowing they should get back on the road but looking at the rough lines of the mountains on the sky. He can breathe here. It’s easier to breathe here, and in the car with the windows down and Whitney Houston playing and David laughing next to him. It’s not easy, but it’s not hard either.

For the first time in the past few hours, he wishes David were awake. He wishes he could see the reluctantly impressed look on his face when he sees this view. He wants David beside him on the hood of the car, shoulders pressed together. He wants to rest his head on his shoulder, wrap an arm around his waist, and pull him close. If he focuses, he can almost feel it, the warmth of his body pressed into Patrick’s, steady and comforting and familiar. He’s craving closeness to him, which feels like it should feel wrong after spending a week together in a van with no one else. 

He thinks about taking out a map and showing David what they’re looking at, David’s eyes following his pointed finger before sliding back to just watch Patrick talk. He wants more. He wants David to burrow into his side, to wrap a blanket around him when the wind gets too cold and pull him close under it, thumb on his cold, pink cheek as he leans in to kiss him. 

He blinks hard and glances around, inhaling sharply. David is still asleep in the passenger seat and he’s in too bad of a mood to share this with Patrick anyway; the frustration curls through him, spreading slowly with the reminder of reality. He wants David to be awake, he wants David to stay asleep, burning off his bad mood, he wants David to be next to him, he wants David and his tantrum to be miles away from him.

He should get back on the road.

David stirs not much later, when they're driving again, looking disoriented. “I think it’s going to rain,” he says, peering out the window. 

He’s probably right; the clouds ahead of them are worryingly dark. “We should get to the next campground in time,” Patrick says. David looks doubtful, but he doesn’t say anything else. Patrick is grateful for it; they feel on the edge of something, wired from the small space and prolonged time together. 

It’s starts to rain before they arrive, driving into a sheet of it. One second it’s dark and the next Patrick slows to forty miles an hour. He can feel the tension building beside him as David stiffens, focusing hard on his phone and not on the fact that they can’t see ten feet ahead of them. Patrick makes it a few miles before turning on his hazards and pulling over into a field wordlessly. 

He turns the ignition off and leans back in his seat. He can see, out of the corner of his eye, David crossing his arms and throwing his phone into the cupholder. “It should pass soon. Since it’s just a summer storm.” David shrugs and looks out the window and Patrick bites his tongue until he doesn’t want to. “Sorry I can’t control the weather.”

He can see David twitch, like he’s going to snap his head in Patrick’s direction, but stops himself. “Not your fault,” is all he says. 

Patrick waits, waits for David to say more, but he doesn’t, which only makes him more irritated. He reaches into the back to get his book, settling into his seat and cracking it open for the first time this trip. David glances at him, but stays silent. 

He doesn’t make it past the first five pages, unable to concentrate on the words in front of him over the sound of the rain on the roof and the way David sighs every now and then. He wants to snap at him to get it together, but he doesn’t think it’d be fair. He knew what this trip was, knew what David could be like and probably would be like after a week living out of a van and occasionally motel rooms. So he spends the next half hour of rain not saying anything, jaw clenched as he looks at the same page ten times over.

When it does stop, the rushing sound outside the windows going from a heavy din to just barely noticeable plinks, he starts the car immediately. The road is empty but when he tries to pull onto it, the tires skim in the dirt. He swears under his breath and David looks up, surprised. “Van’s stuck,” he mutters, turning the car off again and getting out. 

His shoes sink into the mud, which he really should have seen coming. So now he’s angry with himself as much as David and the weather and the field and the dirt. He opens the door to the driver’s seat but doesn’t get in. “We’re going to need to push it. Can you drive while I push?”

David nods, crawling over the center console into the driver’s seat, chewing on the corner of his mouth. Patrick goes back around, staring at the back of the van for a beat too long, wondering how he’s going to be strong enough to push it by himself. He gets sweaty and muddy doing it, and even more annoyed than before, but he manages not to snap at David when he asks if he’s made progress.

He leans his forehead against the back window, shoulders heaving. He can see David watching him through the window; he has the decency to look concerned. “Okay,” he says, pushing himself off and nodding once. “Let’s go again.”

The van doesn’t budge and David pokes his head out the window. “Are we going to be sleeping here until this mud dries, or…?” 

Patrick digs his nails into his palm and calls back, “I don’t know, David, do you feel like waiting here long enough for it to dry even though it’s summer and will probably rain again?”

David’s head retreats back into the car. He murmurs something Patrick can’t hear, which is probably a good thing. And they go again. They go again until Patrick is filthy, covered in mud and sweaty and too tired now to be angry anymore. He’s thinking about the shower he won’t have tonight because they won’t make it to the motel and what David will say about sleeping next to him like this when the car finally budges, just enough to get traction. David lets out a yelp and the car shoots forward, just enough to get out of the mud and onto the gravel beside the road. Patrick wants to sit down and put his head in his hands and probably cry. Nothing has ever felt more like relief than this, he thinks, then feels ridiculous for thinking it.

He moves to go to the driver’s side, but David stays put. “I’m driving,” he says, looking Patrick up and down.

“I’m fine to drive,” he replies, though he isn’t. 

“Get in the van, Patrick,” David says, tilting his head towards the passenger side. He wavers, just for a second to see if David will budge, but he doesn’t, so he gets into the passenger seat and tries to wipe the mud off in the grass.

David drives the speed limit and plays the music Patrick wants to play and lets Patrick sleep. He wakes just as he’s pulling into a hotel, a real one and not a roadside motel. “Where are we?” 

“About two hours from where we were when you slept,” David replies.

“Helpful, thanks,” Patrick says. 

“So I booked us a room,” David tells him, letting his eyes drift to Patrick’s briefly.

Patrick arches an eyebrow. “Oh?”

He called when Patrick was asleep, pulled over to book it with his parents’ credit card. Patrick wants to protest, say it’s too much and he wants to pay his way, but David shuts him up with a look and slides his eyes down his body, as if to say, _Remember how you’re covered in mud?_

David is about to get out of the car, door open and everything, when Patrick stops him. “Hey,” he says, watching as David pauses, one leg hanging out the door. “Can we—” He can’t finish the sentence and then he’s frustrated with himself as much as David that he can’t get it out. “I just—I mean, I’m sorry. For being an asshole. And impatient with you or whatever.”

He watches as David pulls his body back into the car fully, closing the door and sitting back in the driver’s seat. “Me too,” he ends up saying, looking down at his hands. “I know I’m not like, an enjoyable road trip partner.”

“Whatever, it’s not like I am either.” Because he isn’t, because he made David do things he didn’t want to do and he had a panic attack on the highway and got mad at him over the weather. 

David looks at him, dubious. “You planned this whole thing and I’ve just—I ruined your romantic plans with Rachel.”

Patrick can’t help but laugh at that. “Yeah, I think any romantic plans I had with Rachel were ruined the second I said ‘Let’s break up.’” That drags a smile from David’s lips, slight and almost imperceptible. “You’ve made it…bearable.”

“Bearable,” David repeats. “Glowing review.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

They’re quiet again, David just tangling his fingers together and worrying his lower lip between his teeth. “We just have a whole week left to go of this. And neither of us have much room for privacy. And I can’t really deal with it if we’re fighting.”

“Me neither.”

Patrick nods, decisive. “Okay. So we both agree not to take the others’ irritation because of confined spaces and lack of showers every day personally?”

“I mean…” David starts to smile, slow and teasing. “Within reason. This isn’t free reign to be a jerk?”

“Noted.”

They don’t say much more after that, which Patrick likes, because neither of them are angry anymore, just in need of quiet. David collapses onto one of the two beds in their room, face first. He drops his bag to the floor, kicking off his shoes without lifting his head from the mattress. “Get in the shower,” he says, muffled into the duvet. “You smell bad.”

He gets bored in the shower, usually, feeling lazy and restless at not doing anything productive, but this time he stands under the spray for several long minutes before he reaches for the soap, watching the water go dark brown down the drain, then back to clear. He stays in the shower a few minutes longer, just closing his eyes and resting his forehead against the cool tile as the bathroom gets steamier. 

When he finally does leave the bathroom, feeling admittedly much better than he did when he entered, David is lying on his back, scrolling through his phone. He glances at Patrick, eyes trained on his face, which makes sense because Patrick just has the towel knotted around his waist and he’s only being polite. He tries not to think about how he can see the pink high on David’s cheeks even in the low light.

“Nice shower?”

Patrick just nods and crosses the room to his bag, hearing David get up and shut the bathroom door behind him. He has one more pair of clean, unworn pajamas and he pulls them on and crawls into bed. He texts his mom and dad pictures from the past few days. Rachel has texted him that she hopes he’s having a good time with David, which means his mom told her he did end up going on the trip. He closes the message tab without responding. 

… 

After midnight, after Patrick has spent hours staring at the beige curtains of their room, he hears David rustling in bed behind him, too much movement for him to be shifting in his sleep. Patrick closes his eyes, counts his breath, and pretends he’s asleep, feeling like a coward. David stops moving eventually, and Patrick thinks he’s gone back to sleep. He hasn’t.

He can hear David get out of bed, waiting to hear his footsteps recede across the carpeted floor, quiet and muffled as he walks to the bathroom. Instead, David is approaching Patrick’s bed, slow and tentative. “Patrick?” His voice is just barely a whisper, so quiet Patrick almost misses it and would have if he were asleep.

He rolls over, sitting up in bed. “Hey,” he says, voice cracking. He squints up at David. “What’s… Um, what’s up?”

David shifts his weight. His arms are crossed over his chest, shoulders high and tense. “I’m like, pretty sure my mattress is just a collection of springs with no padding,” he says and leaves it at that.

Patrick frowns, leaning over to turn on the light, because his eyes aren’t adjusting and he doesn’t like not being able to see David’s face. “Okay?” 

“And you seem to be sleeping okay,” he adds, like that helps anything.

He’s not, but he doesn’t tell David that. He shrugs. “Yeah, it’s fine.” In the light of the bedside lamp, Patrick can see David’s mouth twist, brow knit as he sways slightly. “David,” he says, because he thinks he understands what he’s saying now. “Are you asking if you can sleep with me?”

David’s eyes widen, words tumbling from his mouth quickly as the tips of his ears go pink. “Just in your bed!”

Patrick lets a grin come over his face, wide and happy. “That’s what I meant,” he says slowly.

He’s nodding vigorously now and very obviously not meeting Patrick’s eyes. “Right, right, right, mmhmm, of course,” he says quickly, letting out a quick, breathy sort of laugh as he tugs at his collar. 

Patrick waits for him to collect himself before moving to the other side of the bed and throwing the blankets back. “Come on,” he says, flicking his head. He watches as David hesitates, like he’s still not sure even if he was the one that asked and they’ve shared beds before. Granted, they were under the age of ten and Patrick hadn’t thought about kissing David quite as much as he does now but he figures if he’s lasted this long without pulling David close and kissing him soundly, then they’ll survive the night.

They don’t.

David lays on his back beside him, staring at the ceiling after Patrick has turned off the light and rolled onto his side. “Yeah, so I still can’t sleep,” he says, turning his head toward Patrick. 

Patrick makes a big show of cracking open one eye to look at him. “Clearly,” he says. “Do you feel like the mattress is made of springs and no padding?”

He watches David’s lips begin to curl into a smile before he buries his face into his pillow, shaking his head into it. “I couldn’t sleep,” David says, with emphasis, like he’s saying more than what he’s actually saying.

“I figured.”

David’s lower lip is caught between his teeth as he thinks, the line between his brow deepening. “I missed the van?” He says it like a question and Patrick has to swallow his laugh. “I mean, not the _van_ —” He gestures vaguely, as if that helps. “But more like. Sleeping in the van. Like the _experience._ ” He waves his hand again.

He could say something like he’s surprised David would miss it, take his words literally and tease David within an inch of his life before going back to sleep and driving all the way home. He doesn’t. He’s going to be brave like he hasn’t ever been, like he’s been wanting to. “I missed it too,” is what he says, weighing his next words on his tongue. “Sleeping next to you.”

He watches David’s face transform as he takes in Patrick’s words, open, unabashed hope coming over it. It leaves Patrick feeling breathless, like whatever’s been missing for the past few years is falling into place as he reads David. He’s going to kiss him tonight. There’s an inevitability to it; he’s unsure if he’ll be the one to lean in, or if David will, but it’s going to happen. Soon, maybe in the next few minutes. The thought leaves Patrick feeling dizzy. 

Finally, David opens his mouth. “Me too.” Patrick can see him swallow hard. “Missed sleeping next to you. Also. That’s what I meant.”

The corners of Patrick’s mouth curve upward. “I guessed,” he says, with a little shrug. 

“It’s nice.” David says the words quickly, like he’s afraid if he doesn’t they won’t come out. “I like sleeping next to you. Um. Being with you. In general. It’s nice.”

He digs little half-moons into his palms with his nails, keeping his hands safely by his side. They’re hurtling towards something but Patrick wants to be ready, he wants to be calm and prepared when it happens so he can remember it all. “Good,” he says.

David waits for him to say something more, but he doesn’t. “So you don’t think being with me is nice?” he asks.

He tries to keep a straight face and fails. “I never said that.”

David’s eyes narrow as he says, “Mm, but you didn’t not say it?” 

Patrick’s laugh is low and soft and David looks delighted to have drawn it from him, warm and so close to him in bed. He wants to kiss him so achingly badly, but he can’t decide how, thinking about putting his hands on his hips, on his cheeks, lacing their fingers together, nudging his nose against David’s first, just to make sure. He isn’t saying anything, just looking at David for so long, much too long as he starts to spin out, wondering what David is thinking, worrying he’s read it wrong before berating himself for thinking that, when David is right beside him, sleep-rumpled and close enough to touch, his gaze slipping to his lips every now and then. 

He watches as David’s lips part, mouth opening and closing as he wavers between things to say. In the end, David just shifts closer on the bed, looking excited but mostly scared and vulnerable, so vulnerable that Patrick wants to be braver than he is so he can kiss him already and take that uncertain look off his face. He lets his eyes drop to David’s mouth again, watching him move closer before he lets himself close his eyes and just be kissed. 

David is soft to the touch, his lips just brushing against his, like he still isn’t sure, like he wants to give Patrick an out, as if he’s still expecting Patrick to push him away and tell him they’re just friends. There’s something in David’s lips that makes him braver, so Patrick surges forward, sliding his hand to David’s neck and pulling him close, putting all the certainty he feels into the kiss. He hears David’s gasp against his mouth, feels his hand at the back of his neck, anchoring him to this bad hotel bed in the middle of nowhere. 

As slowly as it started, David pulls away, eyes still closed. He’s still so close Patrick goes cross-eyed trying to focus on him, blinking away the disorientation. When he does, when David opens his eyes and a smile starts to tug at his lips, everything around them settles. He realizes he’s trembling. He had thought, when he first allowed himself to think about David this way, that it would tilt everything, that they wouldn’t work as anything but friends, that it would be weird and the aftermath awkward and they’d never recover, or they would but things would be different. Different was the last thing he wanted with David, craving the stability, the constancy of him in Patrick’s life.

Nothing about this feels different. It feels terrifying, shockingly natural to kiss David, to watch him try not to smile when he pulls away. He wants to do it again. He does. 

They kiss for so long Patrick has to remind himself to pull away. “We should talk,” he says, muffled against David’s lips. David hums against him, and kisses him again, hitching one of his legs over his body. “David…” he says, but lets himself be kissed again. And again. 

Finally, after what feels like hours but is probably minutes, Patrick pulls away and puts his hand on David’s chest. David pouts and it’s almost enough to crack Patrick and make him kiss the look off his face. “I want to talk,” Patrick tells him, watching the openness on David’s face cloud over as he starts to filter his reactions. 

“Okay,” he ends up saying, scooting away from Patrick.

“Not in a bad way,” he says quickly. “I just feel like… I don’t know, you’re my best friend, we should communicate about this.”

David is nodding a lot, listening carefully and clearly trying to keep his face under control. Patrick knows him well enough to know he’s badly trying not to spin out. “Okay, let’s talk.”

Offering open communication and actually going through on it turn out to be two vastly different things. Patrick lays there for more than a minute tossing the words around in his head, wanting to know where David is, what he’s thinking, before he opens himself up and lays it all bare. But David looks like he’s waiting for him and Patrick was the one that suggested it, so he’s going to do this. He’s going to do this.

He takes a breath and tries not to look like it takes too much effort. “Right so. Uh. I like you. Like more than a friend,” he clarifies, because he’s known David since they were six and probably loved him as a friend just as long. This is different. 

All David says, slowly, is, “Okay.”

“And I sort of have for a while,” Patrick says, all at once, before he can stop himself against his better judgement. 

“Okay.”

“Also I’m not straight,” Patrick says. He’s not sure what he is yet, but he knows that he likes David too much, more than he’s ever liked anyone, is probably falling dangerously for him. He also knows he’s going to figure it out. He knows that with a calming sense of certainty. “Clearly,” he adds, because they just did make out for half an hour.

David bites the corner of his mouth, frowning slightly. Patrick wants to reach out and smooth out the wrinkle in his forehead, but David hasn’t done anything but kiss him and say _Okay_. 

“I need you to say something,” Patrick says, sounding breathless and more desperate than he’d like.

He watches as David swallows hard and worries his lower lip between his teeth. He looks like he’s about to start shaking like a leaf. And then finally, just before Patrick thinks he’s going to go genuinely insane, he says, quiet as anything, “I like you too. More than a friend should.”

It feels like relief to hear, but his heart is still hammering, trying to catch up with all this new information. “Okay,” Patrick says. “Good. That’s good.”

David’s next words come out as a rush, like he’s pushing them out as fast as he can before he manages to stop himself, like Patrick did before. “Like for a while. Maybe years? Um. Yeah. I’ve liked you a really long time.”

Patrick can’t help the grin that comes over his face. It feels like being understood, finally, like they’re on even-footing and he can say everything he’s ever wanted to say but held back. He presses his forehead to David’s, just briefly before he kisses him.

“It’s just that?” David starts when he pulls away, thinking hard. “You never said anything. And I thought that if you had something to say, it’d be to me. Because um. You’re my best friend. And also I like guys. But you never said anything, and you seemed happy with Rachel, most of the time…” He trails off. His words are heavy between them.

 _Most of the time._ It wasn’t something they talked about, wasn’t something Patrick was sure David even noticed. He remembers saying it never felt right after every breakup, but that’s what people said after breakups. He didn’t want to be the type of person that went around telling people Rachel made him miserable. Getting back together always felt like an inevitability, so what kind of person would that make him? The kind that told his friends he was unhappy in his relationship only to get back in it two months later? He didn’t like the indecision. He didn’t want David to think he couldn’t land on how he felt about Rachel.

Patrick sucks in a breath and looks down. He’s not sure he can look at David when he says this, even if he wants to, badly. “I knew,” he says, slowly, “I knew that if I told you I liked boys too, that you’d ask which boys. And I didn’t want to lie to you. I knew you’d ask me who, and I could have just said Joey from eighth-grade hockey and Liam from the sophomore play. And I guess it would have been the truth. But not the whole truth, because you wouldn’t be on that list and sometimes,” he lets himself pause, forces his gaze up to meet David’s. “Sometimes it felt like you were the list.”

He watches as David’s mouth twists and turns, trying to stay in a thin line and utterly failing. In the end, he closes his eyes and covers his mouth, tilting his head back before nodding quickly. “Mmhmm, mmhmm,” is all he can seem to say. 

The last thing he wants is David to spin out or cut and run from this, so he tries to slow down, backpedal a bit without taking anything back or softening the truth. “I’m sorry, I know that’s a lot, and it’s okay if you want to just stay friends, because that’s easier or—or whatever. But I just had to tell you,” he says, carefully as David watches him, clearly trying to read what’s happening in Patrick’s head. 

David swipes a hand over his face again before breathing in deeply. “Right so like. I know there were other people. Other than you. _You_ know there were other people. And there was _Stevie._ But um. Sometimes it felt like you were my list too.” He pauses before waving his hands and saying emphatically, “Like the _whole_ list.”

A slow smile takes over Patrick’s face as David exhales, clearly relieved yet still tense about getting that out. “Thank you,” Patrick says honestly, trying to go for as genuine and grateful a tone as possible and hoping he gets there. To know it was him, it was Patrick, for David, all along—it helps. It calms the fears curdling in his stomach, the knowledge of the risk they’re taking. “For saying that.”

David shrugs. “It’s the truth. And you know how I am with that.”

It’s a relief to laugh, after pushing all these hard honesties out of himself. “I mean, clearly, if you were head over heels for me for our entire lives and I never knew.”

“Would we say head over heels?” David asks. “Or like, our entire lives? Because we were children for a lot of our lives and I’m not sure it didn’t take me many years and lots of self-reflection to figure _this_ out.” He pauses to think for a second. “Also? I feel like you not knowing maybe says more about you than me? I was offensively obvious.”

Patrick nods seriously. “Right, because telling me to get back with Rachel if she made me happy and hooking up with our friend is definitely super obvious. Can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner.”

“ _Okay_ , I was just trying to do what was best for you.”

“Which involved hooking up with Stevie.”

“Mmh, maybe that had more to do with the fact that I couldn't be kissing the friend I wanted to be kissing and thought you were straight and never in a million years wanted you to feel uncomfortable in our friendship because you knew I liked boys?”

That last part makes Patrick hesitate, whatever witty remark he wants to send back stopping in his throat. He knows the feeling David is talking about. “Hey.” He grabs David’s hand, running his thumb across the back of it. “You never once made me uncomfortable.”

David rolls his eyes, clearly trying for levity. “Well, I know that _now_.”

He squeezes David’s hand, bringing his gaze back to his face. “Really. I know what that’s like. Not wanting to mess things up with friends because,” he falters, but pushes on, “Because you like them and think you shouldn’t and think they don’t feel the same.”

He watches as David swallows hard and blinks quickly, looking away. He gets it, that feeling of having someone know what you’re saying without having to say it, just because they have this shared thing between them. It’s not just David, it’s every lingering touch he’s ever had with another boy and all those times he dug his nails into his palm, kept his hands by his side, that voice in his head going _friends, you’re friends, friends don’t want to touch friends like that._ He pushes the voice aside and tugs David’s hand closer.

They talk for what feels like hours more, about all the missed signals and their worries, and it spills out of Patrick so openly, so easily, he’s taken aback. With every word he hears from David, he feels more settled, every risk he worried he was taking starting to look like nothing at all. David doesn’t tell him everything about him and Stevie, about those weeks they were more than friends and then the weeks where they all pretended it never happened. But he tells him enough, and he spends so much time stumbling through making sure Patrick knows this is different that Patrick has to cut him off with a kiss. Patrick doesn’t tell him everything about Rachel either, just how exhausting it was to be always _trying_ and never just being. 

They talk about nothing too, just the times they were sure the other saw right through them, catching up on everything they missed. Patrick feels like he has to rewire his brain as David tells him about what he was feeling during every moment they were together. It doesn’t feel quite real, that the person he was sitting next to in history class for all these years was just there, aching for him and he didn’t even know. 

And then they kiss until Patrick loses count, until he’s shaking in David’s arms, thrumming with wanting him this badly; he lets out a gasp against David’s mouth, open against his, and David’s hands retreat. “Sorry,” he says, still shaking. He feels he’s losing his mind a bit and wonders if this is what everyone feels when they kiss people and how the hell he didn’t notice that kissing Rachel, or anyone else, didn’t feel this way. 

David is frowning at him, which almost makes it worse. “For what?” he asks, definitely making it worse, because it just makes Patrick fall apart even more; he’s becoming increasingly sure that he’s in love with David, something he never allowed a thought to before. 

“Never mind,” he mutters, bashful and quiet.

David doesn’t push it.

The mood is broken and it’s like they’re both remembering how late it is, like it’s hit them all at once. David yawns. “We should sleep,” Patrick says. It comes out unconvincing.

David hums in response, nodding a bit, everything about it looking like obligation. They blink at each other for several moments too long before David is pressing his lips between his teeth and looking at Patrick like he’s waiting for him to close his eyes first. 

“Goodnight, David,” he says, just under his breath.

He watches as David rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling, before twisting his head to meet Patrick’s gaze. “Goodnight, Patrick.”

… 

He wakes facing David. There’s a moment, instinct more than anything, where he leans back, shifts away in the bed to give David space. But then he can still feel the touch of David’s lips, tentative and scared at first, light as anything against Patrick’s. He can’t help it; his mouth curves upward, something warm sliding down his chest to his toes. He’s glad David is asleep, glad no one else is around to witness the look on his face, the way he wants to pull his knees to his chest and bury his head in his hands and let out a closed-mouthed scream. He has to satisfy himself with turning his face into his pillow with his eyes shut tight. Het lets himself have the moment, the moment where he feels a little like he might crack right open. 

When he’s done, he looks back at David, his hair flattened against the pillow, eyelids fluttering as he sleeps. He badly wants to wake him, but doesn’t know how. Preemptively waking David is a risk and could throw off the rest of their day. He can be patient.

He falls back asleep, eventually, because staying awake gives him too much time to overthink and that’s the opposite of what he wants to be doing right now. He doesn’t want to think at all. He just wants to be with David. 

David is awake the next time he opens his eyes, but the second he sees Patrick’s eyes open, he shuts his own and lets his limbs go loose. For a few seconds, Patrick lets him pretend he’s asleep, pressing his lips in a thin line; he’s not going to laugh. Once he’s sure David is convinced he hasn’t been caught, he scoots forward in bed and says, “Did you just pretend to go back to sleep to avoid talking to me?”

He watches as David cracks one eye open, looking caught. He opens his other eye. “No.” It isn’t convincing.

Patrick squints at him, relishing in the way David squirms under his gaze. “You sure about that?” He wonders, briefly, that if it were anyone else, he’d worry that they pretended to go back to sleep the second he woke up. He wonders if he should be worried; but he’s trying to think less about should, so he brushes the thought away and focuses on the tinge of red at the tips of David’s ears. 

“Mmh, pretty sure,” David replies, reminding Patrick that he asked him a question. 

He shrugs, as well as he can, horizontal in a stiff hotel bed. “I’ll let it pass.”

There’s a curve to David’s lips that’s fighting to form a real smile and he seems to be losing. “Thanks,” he says slowly. “Generous of you.”

“I try.” He shrugs again. 

David’s eyes can’t stay still, almost afraid to land on Patrick, or anywhere else to make it even more obvious he can’t make eye contact. Patrick can tell, in the bright light of the morning, that David still isn’t sure where they stand, what the rules are, what he’s supposed to do. Patrick doesn’t feel any more grounded than he does, but he’s feeling brave, inexplicably brave, so he slides a hand over the mattress to extricate David’s from their nervous fiddling. He laces them together and watches as David looks down at them.

He can feel David’s pulse against his own, unmistakably elevated, so he tightens his grip and tries to get David to look at him. Once he does, Patrick finds whatever words he hasn’t found caught in his throat. “I—uh.” He can’t manage to get anything else out, feeling irritatingly lost. He was supposed to be making David feel comfortable; now they are both anything but. 

When David does speak, it comes out hesitant. “Should—Should we like, talk more?” He swallows hard, like the words were hard to say. 

“What do you want to talk about?” 

David shrugs, which doesn’t help with the sudden utter lack of confidence. He bites at the inside of his cheek and decides he doesn’t need confidence—just something to say.

“To recap,” he says with an inhale, trying to keep meeting David’s eyes. “I like you. And I’m predicting I’m going to like you for the foreseeable future, if that’s all right with you.” He tries for casual and probably misses. It doesn’t matter; David kisses him anyway, hand on his cheek.

When he pulls away, he lets his forehead rest against Patrick’s and whispers, so quiet Patrick barely catches it, “I like you too.” It feels like he was going to say more, or wanted to say more, but he doesn’t and Patrick knows to quit while he’s ahead with David. 

David is pulling him closer, closer than they ever got last night, and then they’re making out, like Patrick always thought about, like how he always imagined high school to be. He’s got his legs tangled with David’s, his hand in his hair and David’s mouth open against his and he never wants to move. There’s a part of him, the small part that’s still somehow lucid, that wonders why they weren’t always doing this, why they waited so long to do this, when it feels this good. 

David is a line of heat against him, all soft pajamas and little sighs against Patrick’s lips and he can’t help it; he hitches a leg over David’s hip and presses him into the mattress, drawing out a noise from David he’s never heard before, high and needy. He can feel a hand hovering at the hem of his shirt before sliding up his back, nails dragging. It draws out an embarrassing noise from his lips and in retaliation, he moves his mouth over David’s jaw, nipping at it before dragging his lips to his neck, sucking a mark into the skin there. He never liked hickeys, never liked the way some people showed up at school the Monday after prom in scarves, like that made it any less obvious, like they weren’t begging to be asked about it. It felt like bragging and it felt like bragging over something Patrick didn’t even want. 

He runs a thumb over the bloom of red on David’s shoulder, pulling away and looking at it. He can feel David’s eyes on him, watching carefully. He doesn’t want anyone to see it, he doesn’t want David to wear a scarf to school the Monday after prom, but he likes that it’s there and will be there for a few hours, under David’s layers of clothing, maybe even lasting until tomorrow. He wants to keep leaving them there, peppered under David’s clothes, just between them.

Eventually, David breaks, done with being patient as he watches Patrick. “Everything okay?” His voice comes out more scared than Patrick would like it to be, so he snaps his gaze back to David and nods quickly.

“Yeah,” he replies, letting himself smile at David, because that’s what he needs. “Just thinking.”

One of David’s eyebrows arches up. His hands are still on Patrick’s hips. “Like… Bad thinking or good thinking?”

“What’s bad thinking?”

“Bad thinking is ‘Oh my god, I’m giving my best friend a hickey and I don’t like it and we have to drive home together and we probably won’t talk about this ever again until our friendship inevitably suffers and fades away to nothingness.”

Patrick smiles, sliding his hands over David’s shoulders. “Not bad thinking then,” he replies. David tucks his lips between his teeth, rolling his eyes up at the ceiling. “Are you going to tell me what good thinking is?”

“Oh, I didn’t get that far.” David is just a breath away now, the curve of his smirk too close not to kiss; Patrick does, but only briefly. “Why don’t—” He kisses him again, cutting him off. “—You tell me? Since you’re thinking it.”

Patrick kisses him a little longer, lingering and burying a hand in David’s hair. When he pulls away, David looks dazed. “Good thinking is ‘I really like kissing David and I’m going to keep doing it until he shuts up.’”

David makes a disgruntled noise against his lips. “That’s not very nice.”

“Don’t care.” And then David really does shut up.

They’re late to check out, stumbling from the room after the cleaning crew hammers on the door. Getting out of the room turns into an affair the second David falls off the bed, glaring up at Patrick as he laughs from the bed, legs tangled in the sheets. They check out with ruffled hair and a blush high on Patrick’s cheeks. David is walking around looking unmistakably proud, like leaving a hotel room with Patrick beside him, rumpled and clearly kissed senseless, is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. It feels somehow remarkably adult and embarrassingly juvenile at the same time, but he doesn’t find himself caring. 

Their hands knock together as they walk through the parking lot and Patrick extends a finger experimentally. It brushes the back of David’s hand and his gait slows, mouth twisted. He reaches out his own finger, almost hooking it around Patrick’s but not quite. It’s too noticeable to be an accident, David’s face too self-satisfied for it to be nothing, so Patrick brushes his knuckles across the back of his hand before going the whole way, slipping his hands into David’s and staring resolutely ahead. Holding it outside their room, outside the bed where he kissed David for the first time, feels bold, but he does it anyway and just thinks about the way David holds it back, hesitating, then tightening his grip like he wants Patrick to know he’s not letting go.

He only lets go when they reach the van and he does it slowly, fingers outstretched as Patrick pulls his hand away to walk to the passenger side. He can feel the tips of David’s fingers right up until he can’t reach them anymore; once the van is between them, he ducks his head and lets himself grin, wide and toothy. 

David hands him his phone after buckling his seatbelt. There’s a playlist queued on the screen, an unfamiliar one titled _i wanna hold ur hand_. “Here,” he says, not looking at Patrick as he turns the key in the ignition. “Play this one?”

He plugs David’s phone into the aux and taps shuffle on it before scrolling through and studying it closely. It’s predictably David—a smattering of Carly Rae, Mariah, and Diana Ross—but it’s [ the first song ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyouhbgAiCA) that stops Patrick, his finger hovering over the screen mid-scroll. David is still looking at the road, hands at ten and two, but there’s heat to his cheeks, which only makes the warmth in his chest stretch and expand everywhere, like David is lighting him up from the inside. Patrick feels something thick rise in his throat and he blinks three times before looking back at the title of the playlist and the scattered songs of Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones on the playlist.

“David,” he says, turning to face him properly. “Did you put Bob Dylan on one of your own playlists?”

David’s knuckles whiten on the wheel, his chin tucking back against his chest. He opens his mouth, then closes it and pauses. “No.”

Patrick must look dubious because David glances at him fully before snapping his gaze back to the road. “It sounds like you did.” He’s trying badly not to laugh, biting the inside of his cheek and everything; he’s not risking David shutting up. He wants to keep poking at this, keep poking around this playlist called _i wanna hold ur hand_ that Patrick’s never seen before. 

There’s a small, strangled noise from across the car and David looks pained as he says, “Just this song.”

“And some Neil Young,” he prompts, just because he can’t resist. 

David’s shoulders are tensed, close to his ears as he keeps driving, squirming in his seat. “Well. Just a few.”

He can’t keep back the grin anymore, or the incredulous tone either. “Is this playlist for me?” 

David’s mouth contorts into at least six different shapes before he settles on something half-neutral, eyes wide as he watches the road. “I mean, how would we define a playlist being _for_ someone? Because I’m the only one that listened to it, so I feel like by that definition, it’s for me. Is it a carefully curated playlist with a mixture of both of our eclectic tastes, blended together into one organized space on my phone, ready for me to listen to when I can’t do anything else but think about you?” He pauses and inhales. “Like. Maybe.”

Patrick swipes a hand over his face, pressing it against his mouth as he watches David squirm in his seat. “So it is for me?” It’s more of a statement than a question.

“I mean, if it would make you feel better about yourself,” he says, tossing Patrick a look, aiming for something casual, and missing by a mile. 

“Yeah, my ego is what’s at stake here.”

David grows quiet, just attentively driving, more at ease now that the music has switched to one of his artists. “I had nightmares that we’d be out here, a week’s drive away from home and you’d turn to me and tell me no thanks, this was a mistake, you can’t handle another second with me, see you never.”

Patrick turns to look at him. “Really?”

David shrugs, a quick, jolted thing that’s meant to come off more casual than it is. “Irrational. But I still had them.”

Patrick hesitates before he says more, tossing the words around in his brain; there are so many of them, so many ways to tell David how he feels, to reassure him that he thinks of him all the time, wants him to feel good all the time, that the idea that David thinks he’d ever want to leave him, like this road trip isn’t the best week of his life. “Well, I want you here. The whole way home, and after that too.”

David is looking at the road, focused and careful like he always is when he’s driving, but he’s also smiling, that close-lipped, private thing.

They’re late to their next planned stop because they left so late and also because what was supposed to be a quick stop for ice cream turned a very long stop for ice cream and kissing David at a picnic table, straddling the bench as he pulled him in and tasted vanilla and chocolate chip cookie dough. They needed gas too, and David wanted gum and pretended it wasn’t because he was worried about his breath while they kissed, and then Patrick kissed him some more, tasting mint and sugar and David. There they get honked at because they kiss over the center console for too long and block the gas pump. There’s nothing like the look on David’s face when they’re caught, pleased and proud and embarrassed all at once.

The playlist is long and eclectic and David plays it the whole way home until they get sick of it. Sometimes, when he’s feeling safe and comfortable on long stretches of empty highway, he takes one hand off the wheel and slips it into Patrick’s. Patrick feels it too—that unmistakable sense of freedom and relief, their playlist through the speakers, windows down, on their way home. There is a deadline to it, a clear moment when things will swing back to normal. There are conversations to be had too, with his parents, probably with Stevie, and more with David.

He wonders, fleetingly, if he should be more scared than he feels. He’s not, at all. He’s hopeful. And that feels good.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you as always to my absolutely ingenious, lovely betas, who I will be thanking profusely when authors are revealed <3


End file.
